


It's a Hell of a Town

by Amazonia_8



Series: Stamp in Your Passport [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftercare, Alternate Universe - Human, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, BDSM, Bondage, Butt Plugs, Cock Rings, Crying Castiel, Dean is Bad at Feelings, Dildos, Dom Dean, Dom Drop, Dom Sam, Dom/sub, Edgeplay, Flogging, Forced Orgasm, Gags, Hand Feeding, Hand Jobs, Kink Negotiation, Kneeling, Love Confessions, M/M, Masturbation, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Dean, Sam Is So Done, Shibari, Spanking, Spitroasting, Sub Castiel, non-incestual Wincestiel, say that five times fast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 10:19:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8324092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amazonia_8/pseuds/Amazonia_8
Summary: With their time in New Sybaris over, Dean finds he can't put off the demands of the real world any longer. But neither he nor Castiel are willing to let this thing between them end just yet. It's decided, Castiel will follow him up to New York so that he can get a taste of what it means to be properly trained.What it means to belong to Dean.Must read part 1 All Inclusive K!nk first.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes it took forever to get this sequel up. Yes I write slow, because no I don't have the ability to write in a linear fashion. Yes there will be more.
> 
> Just a note, as in the first installment, Dean and Sam do not have a sexual relationship with each other (nor will they in the future) but they do 'work together as a team' at times. If you know what I mean. And I think that you do.

“It hasn’t come up yet.”

“ _Dean!_ ”

In the hallway, Castiel wasn’t exactly trying to eavesdrop, but the office door is closed, it stops him in his tracks to actually hear Sam on the other end of the line all the way through the wood.

“I know man!”

Castiel glances down the hall, conflicted, unable to move even though this felt very wrong. He could only make out the cadence of Sam’s voice now, the frustrated whuff and whine that Dean did his best to quell.

“I’m not….I know! I- You- Sammy that wasn’t the plan, I wouldn’t do that to you…….Well tell him he’s not my boss so he can cool his jets for a few more days. I said I’d take care of it and I will…..I will! But- ……….. _Shit…_..Yeah. Yeah I got it.”

Castiel knows for certain the lowering tone of Dean’s voice means they’re talking about him now. He shouldn't hear this. He should trust Dean to tell him whatever there is to tell.

Turning on his heel, Castiel pads softly back into the living room and sinks into his spot on the couch. The movie screen is paused and he’d promised Dean he would wait for him to take the call from his brother, but the silence is just too much to take so he clicks the play button and tries to stop himself from actively  waiting for Dean to rejoin him. It’s over an hour later when he does and the movie has ended, the screen now occupied with the season finale of a show he used to watch religiously but now annoys him with all the unnecessary plot twists and yet more repetitious angst than can possibly be resolved in the remaining twenty minutes. Dean doesn’t even comment on the fact that Castiel didn’t wait for him. He stares at the black screen of his phone as if expecting it to ring any second.

“You’re leaving.” Castiel was never any good with playing it cool.

“I was always going to have to leave eventually.” Dean tries to look him in the eye but doesn’t make it past Castiel’s chin.

“When?”

“Thursday.”

It’s Tuesday.

This bare fact is yanked through Castiel by a jet of anger so fierce it cleans out his mind completely and he tries logic as a reboot but it’s not taking. He’s not even sure exactly who or what he’s supposed to be angry with.

“We can work something out you know, this doesn’t have to be the end of things.” Dean’s wanders over to the window as he speaks and Castiel’s anger tells him that it _will_ be the end because they’ve been given too much borrowed time as it is and life won’t be put off so easily anymore.

They’ve only had three days together in Castiel’s beige plaster block of an apartment in a late blooming neighborhood of Winston-Salem. The super never fixes anything if he can get away with it but the lawn is always groomed and the sidewalk clear. There’s a painting of dune grass and the sea at sunset in the living room that was here when he moved in and never took down because there was nothing to replace it with. No photos of family or friends that made it out of his phone. No art, no plants, not even a set of curtains to replace the dingy vertical blinds over every window. He hadn’t even understood how suffocatingly _dull_ everything was until Dean.

Well, no, it’s probable he _had_ understood. It was why he’d traveled halfway around the world in the first place. Why he’d risked the wrath of his boss requesting a one month sabbatical on top of his recent vacation. He’d hinted at a family hardship, something vague but pressing that couldn’t be put off and the man had relented because Castiel had never taken a single vacation day the length and breadth of his employment and the last thing he wanted was for him to complain to someone higher up with the power to herd everyone into a mandatory HR training on employee rights. And Castiel was going to face payback for that, he knew it, probably in the form of a dozen extra students sent his way for thesis advisement. But he hadn’t even gotten through half a week. He thought about sitting out the remaining time, finding ways to kill minutes and then hours. Such a waste. Classes would start again, paperwork, laundry, errands.The things he’d wanted to experience with Dean would be shelved, the memories of the island softened until there would be no difference between this Castiel and the one living in the past, before New Sybaris.

Castiel becomes acutely conscious of his own breath in his lungs, oddly parasitic, and in that moment, it happened --though he didn’t recognize it yet--the beginning of an understanding, a shape of something that hadn’t been given a temperament or name. It was almost visible on the edges of sight, moving slowly, circling. Aware. The exact dimensions of its wants were imperceivable. It shouldn’t be trusted. Standing alone within the confines of his life Castiel would never trust it, _had_ never trusted it, since it would ultimately become clear this thing had been stalking his borders for a very long time.

But now there was Dean. He trusted Dean.

Castiel stood up and the painting caught his eye. He realizes why he’d always hated it. Dune grass was sharp and gleaming, a sleek whip of hammered steel that knew how to meet the trials of the sea. Not gracefully soft, not finespun billows stood politely aside as it was imagined here. He waits until Dean can meet his eyes before he speaks, and behind him a ways he could feel the thing at his borders take a few steps closer.

| | |

“It would be different.”

“What do you mean different?”

“Well,” a hand trails up Castiel’s bare ankle, they would both need to shower if they had any intention of going outside today and Castiel starts weighing his odds that there’d been enough shampoo left. “I came out here as your Dom, but we haven’t really been doing that, you know. Guess I thought we’d have more time and I’ve just been having too much fun playing house with you.” He winks from his end of the bed and begins to playfully squeeze the pads of each toe in turn. “But if you came to New York, well it’s different there. I’d have you in my lair, so to speak.” Dean gave a flash of predatory smile, but it wasn’t really a joke.

Castiel knew it wasn’t a joke.

“You’d train me.”

“Yes.”

“How long does that take?”

Dean shrugs and moves his fingers up to massage the fleshy curve of Cas’ calf and Castiel splays himself open at the touch. “Takes as long as it takes, as long as you want. There isn’t really an end until one of us says there is. You could come up for a week if you like, just to try. I can’t do much in a week, but it would give you a better sense of the whole thing. And then if you wanted to keep going…..you could stay as long as you like.”

Castiel considers it.

He pretends to consider it.

Dean was right, they had both succumb to a honeymoon phase these past three days. Not that he was complaining, but it was impossible to label any of Dean’s short time here training, not when it seemed much more important to spend as many waking hours as their bodies could handle making each other come. They hadn’t scened once. Like Dean, Castiel assumed they’d get to that later, once they’d burned off some of the urgency. He didn’t actually notice the difference at first, how could he when every time he turned a corner Dean was there, falling to his knees, spinning him against a wall, bending him over a counter or the dryer or the hallway runner table, fucking into him and sucking the come and the sweat from his body and making him feel out of touch with reality from the constant pleasure and demand. It went on hour after hour, and there were ropes once, but nothing elaborate, they didn’t have the supplies for that. He was never gagged or spanked or made to beg, only a panted promise of such things tacked on as an afterthought, it was much too important for them just to glut themselves on one another and Castiel was perfectly happy to do so. He was sore all the time and the house was bare of every kind of supply. He was having trouble keeping up with the laundry. There was nothing like a routine, unless you counted the unconscious domesticity they’d fallen into, but sharing stories over take out, or curling up on the couch for a movie they would never get around to finishing wasn’t really the same thing.

Perhaps that was why he’d felt so angry yesterday. He hadn’t been prepared for Dean to leave so soon, part of him felt a little cheated, had assumed he’d be collared and kneeling by now but in all fairness he’d never said anything either. He’d just given over and assumed Dean would bring them to that point eventually. He had been passive, and maybe now he was realizing that was not the same thing as submissive.

Castiel drags himself away from the bed, sitting himself down naked at the desk. He waits until he hears Dean turn on the shower. The email isn't long, but then again, there isn't much to state other than facts. He checks it for errors once before blindly clicking send. If he’d thought about it for even a second longer his rationality would have jumped on the opportunity to talk him out of it.  

| | |

Sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal, Dean scrutinizes Castiel as he tries for the third time to get the coffee pot situated correctly in the machine. He's leaving this afternoon, but yet here they are in the kitchen having breakfast, both in boxers and tshirts like this sort of normal behavior wasn’t about to end.

It's infuriating to Castiel, the way his hands shake, how he can feel every fiber of clothing against his skin. His cock hung heavy between his legs, alive and screaming at him all because of the way Dean just watches him, laser-hot but housed in that practiced nonchalance of his. The muscles of his wrist flex unfairly beneath the wide leather band of his watch, he holds the mug of coffee from the bottom with his whole hand, palming it easily, and the sight makes Castiel squirm.

In three hours when he stands in this kitchen, it will be alone.

“Sit down.”

Castiel drops into the chair, grateful for the direction. Dean’s expression betrays nothing, he stares at him in silence for a bit, taking in the flush of his cheeks, the marked difficulty holding eye contact. Rising, he takes a sheet of paper from the counter and places it in front of Castiel. A simple document, more outline than contract, he was to read it, read it again and be prepared to ask questions.

“And if I’m fine with all of it?” Castiel arches a brow. He really hadn’t done enough in this world to know what he would and wouldn’t like. Nothing he might consider a hard no was detailed on the sheet, Dean’s taste, or perhaps just intuition, well tailored to Castiel’s interests. But there are things on here they absolutely hadn’t done, or even talked about, but he considers himself open minded enough to at least try them.

“Then think of something to ask, anything, because even if you’re fine I need to make sure you understand.”

Castiel skims the paper again, there is really only one thing he needs clarity on, even if he can guess at what it meant.

“Sam is your proxy?”

“Yes,” Dean starts carefully. “Good. You need to understand what that means before you even consider doing this with me.”

Castiel nods.

“I am your Dom, plain as that. I set the rules. But you’ll be staying with both of us and Sam and I are…..very close.” Castiel can tell he is trying to gauge his reaction, ease him in slow to whatever it is he's trying to get across. But Castiel already knows about the brothers, Charlie had explained all about how they liked to Dom together and how not everyone was entirely comfortable with that. Hearing that Sam would somehow be involved was not as much of a shock as Dean seemed to think it would be, even if Castiel had never really given it much thought before now.

“He’d scene with us.” Careful to sound like this wasn’t a problem.

“Sometimes. But more importantly than that, if you come to New York, you’ll be given rules, and Sam will help me make sure you follow those rules if I’m not around. He’ll also have permission to punish you should you break them.”

Castiel did feel a little concerned at that, remembering full well the younger man’s reputation. Dean's quick to alleviate his fears.

“Everything we do, including punishments, will be something you agree to beforehand. We will all sit down and hammer out the details together. But Cas,” he takes Castiel’s hand in his as he levels him with a serious look. “He’s going to want to fuck you. Regularly. And I want him to.”

Castiel goes hot all over. His dick aches down to the root and he signs the paper.

| | |

The I-95 north is a hateful, everlasting stretch of highway. Hour upon hour, and before he had started out, Castiel had stupidly been enamored of the words _road trip,_ uttered by Dean with such boyish enthusiasm that he couldn’t help imagining the whole scenario in hues of sunset gold. And when Dean had said there would be _rules_ , had wanted to make sure that Castiel remembered every mile he crossed, why on earth would he give it a moment’s pause?

It takes exactly three hours for things to get unbearable. One measly third of the way there in good conditions.

Through Richmond, right when the desperation first starts building, onwards through the hellscape of Washington DC traffic, through the bleakness of grey weather Baltimore and up to Philly where he feels his sanity finally crack. Pulling off the freeway and into a side street, digging up his phone and grunting at the constricting tug his movements generated.

He understands now why Dean had done it. The man had explained it to him carefully and in great detail before he had left, giving him every opportunity to back out before illustrating an instruction sheet with each step for Cas to follow later. His hubris now well marked, Castiel recalls the look of fond exasperation he’d given Dean, common now among them and painful to recall each time Dean was proved right, which in matters such as this is damn near always. The rope isn't one they’d used before (he isn't even sure where Dean had gotten it), light and thin and made of a silk that warmed immediately against the skin then melted in to the point you almost couldn’t feel it.

Until you could.

It had been the last thing he’d done after packing the car and putting his home in order. The tie around his chest is a basic sort of harness, an easy frame he could wrap and twist with only the aid of a mirror, something to hide under his shirt that would make him feel bound, secure. With consideration for keeping the tension just the way Dean taught him, it didn’t bite into his skin or constrict his breathing and after a few minutes it was easy to forget it was there. The ropes around his hips and buttocks had pressed nicely against his muscles for the first few hours of the drive, massaging into him softly, giving him something to feel every time the motion of the car shifted his weight. But it was the tie around his cock that was causing the most discomfort now. Dean had told him to tie it loosely, gently, winding the silk around and around until his balls and shaft were encased. It had felt amazing at first, snug and secure, warm but without pressure that might get him too excited.

But now....just willing his hands not to shake as he dials takes all of his focus.

“Hey there angel,” He can hear the smirk coming through the line and it makes Castiel huff.

“This was a terrible idea, I don’t understand why I couldn’t just fly out there.”

The car engine clicks as it cools, not a single person to be seen  on the broken asphalt stump of turnoff next to the river. There are three mismatched picnic tables with benches that were likely dragged here by whoever worked the shipyard next to them. There’s shipping cranes and chain link and the utilitarian mass of a steel girder bridge rising up to the left. Everything is dingy and overworn, cement covered and blocky, but there’s something about the very absence of other people in this place that gives it an otherworldly feel, amplified by the cars above him, speeding along the bridge with a hollow, baying echo of tires against the grate.

“Because Cas, that’s not your choice to make.” He all but purrs into the phone. “The minute you stepped out your door, you’re walking into my world. The road is mine, the hours it takes you, the ropes on your skin, everything belongs to me and I want you to feel that change. Now, where are you?”

“I’m in-” He pants, trying to snatch the words from the oily swirl of need the ropes stir up in him. He is so desperately hard. “I’m in Philadelphia.”

“See, you’re almost here! One more hour sweetheart, you can stand another hour, can’t you? Just don’t touch.”

Castiel glowers at Dean’s voice, shifting in his seat, then squirming, cursing himself, cursing his bound aching cock that struggles against the ropes, which only adds to the pressure and heightens his discomfort.

“It feels like this will never end.”

| | |

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing Sammy, I’m cleaning.”

“Okaaay, but we’ve got a maid. One that wears an actual maid outfit.”

Dean didn’t look up as he kept scrubbing down the stove. “Nope, I fired her. Cas is coming.”

“Huh, so you’re really doing this. I thought for sure you’d chicken out and put him up in one of the other apartments.”

“Not a chance,” he looks up, meeting his brother’s eyes. “I never thought he’d come, I thought-- I just really want him to get here.”

It’s enough that he doesn’t have to explain. Sam knows, just like Dean knows his brother is smiling, and trusts him to ignore the shaking in his hands.

| | |

Traffic jolts to a stop, Castiel’s attention snapping back from where it’d drifted. He’s so close now.

Creeping along an overpass in early evening traffic, small streets below, crowded with identically shaped apartment buildings, branch off in spokes to the right while off to the left he could almost see something that might be Manhattan. Castiel turns up the music, _When the Levee Breaks_ reverberating out at him, the harmonica vigilant and a little drunk. Fatigue, muddled down with persistent, low wattage arousal leaves him feeling unmoored, he’s having a hard time reconciling this moment with reality, that he’s here in this place and giving himself over to something so very far away from any other life he’d known. He wills the traffic to move faster and it spites him by grinding to a halt.

Thoughts of what will happen to him when he gets there offer a distraction.

Conceptually he understood the basics, that Dean and Sam shared an apartment together in Brooklyn, that there was a studio of some sort in the building where both brothers taught the occasional workshop. That Dean’s real income came from restoring cars while Sam crafted the custom leather interiors and an old family friend ran the front office. That he was here to act as Dean’s sub, to receive training, but they hadn’t gone over much more than that, there hadn’t been time. As he finally pulls off the freeway, picks his way through increasingly uninviting streets, Castiel began to wonder if he had perhaps watched too much television, imagined Brooklyn entirely walled in with towering brownstones and record shops filled with painfully stylish young things, sidewalks adorned with elderly neighbors greeting one another by name.

There was nothing like that here.

While most neighborhoods had the general proclivity to get nicer, more manicured the closer they got to a waterfront of any sort, this particular section of blocks had no such ambitions. It had been, or possibly still was, largely industrial. There was nobody here, no pedestrians, no shops, no cars driving along the refuse clogged streets but his own, though lines of them are parked end to end along every available inch of curb. The building Dean had directed him to is massive, running the full length of the block and capped at either end by double smoke stacks that look ready to belch smog at  a moment's notice. Red brick faded to sooty grey, weeds growing in the cracks, heavy gage chain link shoring up the flanks. Castiel doesn’t want to jump to conclusions, but there is no way people could actually live in a place like this. Castiel pulls over to text Dean, nerves starting to sing as he waits in his seat another minute, gathering his wits.

A sharp knock pulls his focus to the window, where Dean stands with a grin, sliding into the passenger seat and cutting over to cup Castiel’s face in both hands and dive into his lips.

“Goddamn baby I’ve been going crazy.” He groans, shoving Cas back into the door another inch, arching his tongue back into that sweet mouth, swallowing the needy, unhappy little sighs Cas feeds to him as the pressure of the damnable ropes and Dean’s urgent press brought his desperation roaring back to the fore. “Come on, let’s park in the garage.”

Pulling around to the back, sharp dip into the narrow sub basement, Castiel is rather surprised to see how many other cars are here. The Impala gleams up ahead and Dean points to the empty spot next to it, hoping out before the engine has shut off and grabbing both bags from the back, slinging them over one shoulder and taking Cas’ hand.

The lobby, at least, is an improvement. The floor scuffed marble, so old a shallow trough was worn along the center path to the bay of elevators ahead of them. Those were still the massive accordion gated freight lifts originally installed in the building, but the rest of the lobby had been renovated, spare but exquisite with a floor to ceiling painting across one wall smeared in shades of red, an enormous iron banded sphere encasing the spindled, glossy black glass chandelier suspended in the vaulted space above. Ahead of them sits a wide black desk, overly ornate considering the man sitting behind it. His suit is immaculate, but the backs of his hands up both hairy wrists were covered in muzzy tattoos, he wears an earpiece and the sandblasted look of an ex-con. Folding his copy of The Financial Times, he slaps it on the desk with an amused look at Dean. “Didn’t know you were back. Crowley’s gonna tear you a new one for taking off like that.”

Dean just smirks, pulls an envelope from his back pocket and places it on the desk.

“Crowley can blow me.” He pushes the manila rectangle closer with a single finger and a significantly raised eyebrow. “Gimme two days. Then I’m free for Crowley to have his stubby little way with me.”

The man looks at Cas then, appraising up and down against some sort of standard, turns back to Dean and shakes his head with a fond, crooked smile, his nail-bitten fingers curling over the bribe.

“You’re lucky you’re my favorite, kid. Two days.”

“You’re a good man Vince, no matter what Sammy says about you.” He wraps an arm around Cas’ waist and steers him towards the elevators.

The car jolts to life the minute Dean hit button number 10. It's a slow ascent, enough time to chew at Dean’s words and taste the sour note of insecurity bloom across his tongue.

“Two days?” Castiel watches the fourth floor button light up. The fifth.

“Huh?” Dean had been tapping his foot incessantly since they entered the car, and it didn’t seem like he was paying much attention to anything but whatever was working his nerves.

Castiel straightens up a little against the pull of his ropes, no longer arousing, now merely infuriating against overly sensitive skin.

“I didn’t realize we only had two days.”

Dean turns then, really looking at Cas, frowning. The next second, the elevator car groans, jerking to a halt, swaying slightly on its cables. He’d hit the stop button and Castiel hadn’t even seen him do it.

“What are you talking about?”

“Dean is this safe? I don’t think you’re supposed to stop elevators like this.”

Dean waves at the button panel with an exaggerated dismissal, “We’re not moving till I’m ready to move, Cas. Now why would you think I’m only keeping you two days?”

“Well you said….I...you didn’t introduce me back there and…”

“Cas,” he steps in closer, grasping both shoulders in firm hands. “Listen up, cause I don’t like to repeat myself. You’re here for as long as you want to be here. If I have limits or expectations of any kind, you can bet that I’m going to let you know about them.” He looks Castiel up and down with a determined eye. “You know what, I think we need to start your training right now.”

Both bags land with a thud to the floor, one on top of the other, Dean folds himself down to sit on top of them.

“Wait, here?” Castiel croaks. “Dean it’s fine, I believe you. I’m just a little- “

He takes in Castiel’s confusion with a hard set look.

“We need to work on getting you out of your head. If you want something, or if you want to know something, you will ask me directly. Do not assume anything about me Cas, ever. I don’t play mind games, that’s not something I’m into. Come here.”

Glancing down at the floor between Dean’s boots, the thought of kneeling in such an unusual locale wakes a smile, he’s just about to drop down when Dean stops him with a hand at his hip.

“I want you to strip.”

Castiel’s smile falters, a reflexive look to the door.

“Cas,” his voice is firm but calm. “You don’t need to think about other people. No one else is going to see you, but if you can’t do this then you need to use your word now.”

They’d kept the green light system. Castiel had found it very logical and simple to remember and Dean hadn’t objected. But he’d never once said red and he wasn’t about to start now. He shook his head then set about removing his clothing, folding each article neatly and placing it on the ground. In the cool air, the ropes against his body come alive against his skin and it feels as if he’s expanding out against them, their bright red color lit up and glowing stark against the drabness of steel walls. He’s half hard and heavy feeling between his legs and he isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do so he stands there, watching as Dean looks him over, then crooks his finger at Cas, gripping the rope looped around his thigh once he’s in reach and pulling him closer till he is standing in front of Dean’s splayed open legs. Dean holds him in place with the rope while his other hand cups Castiel’s balls, kneading them, running his fingers around the cage he’d taught Cas to build around his cock, checking to make sure it was fit well. Castiel groans at the touch, flesh tender and pulsing and now fully hard.

“You look real good like this, you know.” He leans in and nuzzles the trail of hair below Cas’ navel, placing a long sweet kiss at the soft skin there before looking up with too much affection and mischief and heat for Castiel to resist. And the bastard knows it. “Thought I could at least make it all the way upstairs without having a little taste of you but I can’t. Last few hours all I could think about was how I should have driven you here myself, strapped you in the back seat with your hands tied behind your back so I could fuck you open on the side of the rode whenever I wanted. Pull over, shove you face down, grab onto my ropes,” he slipped both hands under the ties around his hips and tugged for emphasis, “and drive you back on my dick.”

Castiel sways at the thought, a petal of sound, soft and needy, sliding from his lips. He wants, god he fucking _wants_ this man to take him and make him scream and he doesn’t care anymore if anyone sees him getting used or hears him beg.  A long trail of fluid leaks from his slit and Dean just stares at it, considering and calm and Castiel’s going to tear his hair out or grab onto his cock for relief but he can’t. He can’t. He can’t. So he clasps his hands behind his back and holds onto his wrists till his knuckles turn white because it’s the only way he can trust himself to keep standing still.

Dean eyes him with mild surprise and Castiel starts to fret that he wasn’t supposed to do that, he hadn’t been told to do anything other than stand here.

“Do you remember what I promised you before I left?” He leans back against the wall and pops the button on his jeans. Castiel’s zeros in on the movement, licking his lips unconsciously.

“Promise…” He murmurs, unsure of the word, enthralled with the way he can hear each tooth of Dean’s zipper as it splits open.

“Yup, gotta keep my promises, don’t I? And I have a feeling you just wouldn’t be able to help yourself if I gave you this.” He grunts a little when he pulls his cock free, holding it firmly and watching as Cas devours the sight with his eyes. “And I’m a man of my word, you’re not gonna come until you’re in my apartment. In fact, I think that’s the only place I’ll let you come anymore. No clubs, no quickie bathroom stalls, not even in your own home Cas, what do you think about that?”

Dean reaches forward to rub a finger against the slick, bulbous head of Castiel’s erection, smiles wicked at the way he arches and moans at this little contact.

“Yeah, I think that’ll be best for you. Teach you boundaries. Can’t have you expecting to get off wherever, whenever.”

“But I could,” Castiel clears his throat, his voice splintered. “I could help you out, couldn’t I?”

“Hmmm, are you asking to suck me down Cas? Want to let your Dom use that pretty mouth so I can feel good?”

Castiel nods, “Mmhmm, yes. Let me-- I mean, may I?”

Dean laughs, delighted. God Cas was cute like this, trussed up and turned on and unsure. He swipes his finger one more time over the head of Castiel’s cock then sucks the fluid clean, humming and sighing.

“You taste desperate Cas, I don’t even think I can give you my dick without getting you too worked up. I know how much you love to have your mouth filled, it might be too risky. You wouldn’t want to waste yourself here, would you? Not when we’re almost home.”

He doesn’t give Castiel a chance to answer, just starts jacking himself as fast as he can.

“So I want you to just stand there and watch me baby, just keep your eyes on this and don’t move. Just gotta take the edge off, you got me so fucking hard.” He groans and twists his wrist, working on getting off as fast as he can. Cas looks lost, whimpering and shifting a little, fighting to stand still as his own desire rockets through him.

“Spread your legs wider,” Dean pants, hips juddering up into his speeding hand. “Get your hands behind your head, fingers laced.”

Castiel does as he’s told and Dean reaches down between his legs, sliding one long finger up his crack to press the pad against the soft furl there. He starts to jack harder.

“Yeah, just want to play with your hole a little. Like to watch you twitch.”

That’s exactly what he does, drawing everything in tight and almost loosing balance for the effort. Dean doesn’t push in, doesn’t give him any other pressure but the light, explorative spirals around and around, tapping playfully, as if fingers could smirk.

“When do you get to come Cas?” The leash on his words betrays how close he really is, the rush and snap of his hand efficient.

“In your apartment,” Castiel husks, eyes burning lest he miss one flexed stroke by blinking. “Only at your apartment.”

“S’right, baby. Gonna have rules. Show you how to be so good for me, is that what you want? Is that what you came here for?”

“Yes,” he hisses just as Dean comes, cupping his hand to capture the spray, the copious fluid quickly leaking between his fingers. Castiel feels both light headed and drilled into the ground. Floating. Unable to move.

Rising, Dean scoops up Castiel’s shirt and wipes off his hand, stuffing all of his discarded clothes into one of the bags. Castiel doesn’t say anything, but the directive is clear. He is to remain like this, naked, rope bound. Coming around to his back, Dean guides each of Cas’ hands gently behind him, tucking his wrists into the rope. Not something he couldn’t escape with little more than a firm tug, but Dean’s desires hold far more power to bind Castiel than twists of silk and cotton.

Pushing the button to start them moving again, Dean shoulders both bags easily, his back to Castiel. “No one will see you Cas, okay? We own the floor and nobody’s allowed up without our say so, which today is not a fucking soul.”

“Okay.”

He can’t fully see it, but Dean’s smile is there all the same.

The door slides opens to a dimly lit hall. To the right is nothing but a dead end, to the left there is a single door a few yards from the elevator. As Dean had said, there’s not a soul in sight. Stepping into the cool air feels like passing through into another reality. There’s a particular scent, not unpleasant, machine oil, decayed wood, dust.  It’s not completely silent, not with the city living outside, but this place feels entirely removed, unaccountable somehow to whatever physics dictate the world beyond this hall. They move past the door, Castiel following on bare, skin tack feet, the wood so old and worn it curls up to meet his arches, urging him along. There’s a single, towering window at the far end, the light soft yet total, spilling down the black painted walls and snagging on the brass plate.

WINCHESTER it reads, as if that was all anyone needed to know.

Dean turns right, as the hall leaves no other option, and Cas follows. Here too is empty and black and leads to another single door mid way down the right wall. This one however is huge, a heavy sliding panel on a wheeled track. In lieu of a key, Dean punches in a code on the digital panel that is clearly a new addition to the building. A fortified clunk follows suit and the door sways minutely, released. Shoving hard, Dean looks over his shoulder and jerks his head for Cas to follow, which he is able to do for exactly five steps inside before he’s stopped dead.

The exterior of the building had clearly pegged this as the sort of reclaimed industrial space that brokered in cavernous lofts, and it was that, in it’s bones. But Castiel’s initial impression, that the nature of the brothers’ activities meant he’d be walking into a stark, hyper masculine set piece filled with black leather and pitted metal, was so far off he wonders briefly if they’d not walked into the wrong apartment.

Dean’s home isn’t anything like what Castiel had imagined, large, yes, but warm and thoughtfully designed. Instead of metal girders on the ceiling, there is wood, the same color as the smooth, wide planks inlayed on the floor. Instead of steel reinforced windows spanning every wall, there are elegant, high-set ones with arched frames, spilling forth torrents of pink evening light but hiding the broken toothed waterfront from view. Tall potted ferns stretch nearly as high as the windows everywhere he looks, and it gives the whole place a sunken, hidden sort of feeling, a secret oasis on a forgotten street.

Dean tosses the bags to the floor and hauls the door shut, muscling a heavy lever that very definitively slots the bolt into place.

“Casa Winchester. Gimme a sec and I’ll give you the nickel tour.”

Plopping down on a side bench, Dean unlaces his boots and peels off his socks, and Castiel notes with some amusement the row of pegs by the door, all of them layered with more flannel than he was sure any two people should own. The floor, too, was a litter of nearly identical boots, discarded socks, and Castiel tries to picture the brothers repeatedly shopping for more of the exact same clothing but finally just comes to the assumption they bought in bulk.

Over to their left is an open kitchen with beautiful copper accents and a stove he’s sure cost more than his car. Beyond that, a dramatically long, tastefully rustic dining table in dark wood with simple, curved backed chairs wrapped skillfully in soft blonde leather.

Under the windows of the far wall, a living space has been denoted with a few deep seated leather sofas and layers of tan and black rugs. Against the left wall, a staircase climbs the brick to disappear somewhere overhead Castiel can’t see. To the right, though, is the most intriguing feature of the apartment, a built-in box, a room within the room. Pale wood walls with one large panel of thickly frosted glass. It’s here that Dean leads him with a crooked finger and a slanted smile.

“Come on baby, in you go,” It’s only a glimpse, an impression of a bedroom in soft greys and white that Castiel see before Dean is on him, mouth feverish, hands hard. Dean maneuvers him further into the room while his teeth sink into Castiel’s bottom lip, the soft angle of a mattress hitting the backs of his thighs as his mouth is forced open by a greedy wet tongue.

“Hold still.” Dean commands, pulling back. Castiel snaps his open mouth closed and does as he’s told, heart racing, palms tacky. Sliding open the drawer of a nightstand, Dean removes strip of black leather, which he places in Castiel’s hand, then pulls out a sturdy pair of medical shears.

Tracing fingers around, underneath the lines, Dean sought out the specific lead he’s looking for, snipping once, twice, and tugging before everything around Castiel’s waist and hips unspools and he ‘s left with an odd phantom throbbing along the grooves in his skin. Dean chucks the shears aside, takes the leather from Cas’ hand and kneels on the carpet, tonguing the spiral furrows impressed on Castiel’s skin before looking up.

“This is a cock ring. Do you consent to wearing it right now?”

Castiel wonders how he does it, can be so commanding and assured of his own place while kneeling at someone’s feet. Castiel doesn’t think he’ll ever felt in command like that in his life.

“Yes.”

Dean nods once then tucks the band under Castiel’s balls and draws it up snug around the base of his shaft, snapping it into place.

“Up on the bed, on your back.”

Easily following Dean’s guidance, Castiel lays himself out along the edge of the bed, ribs shivering at the possessive touch Dean smooths down his flanks. His dick has been aching so long he’s almost afraid to come, it was sure to be painful, he thought, because he needs it so damn badly. The sheets against him are soft and smell of Dean, the pillows soft, room warm. His body wars between the sudden need to sink, to fall hard into the comfort he’s been denied for such a long, trying day and sleep, and the ignoble will of his sex, burning dark against the leather band.

“No touching, no words. Got it? Sounds are ok.” Dean pulls out a bottle of lube, pooling the liquid in his palm before practically coating his hands, and Cas can’t stop himself from shifting desperately at the sight.

“You _want_ to submit, Cas.” A wet finger, cool, direct, finds the rim of his hole and traces it methodically. “I can tell how happy it would make you to give yourself over, you’ve been your own master for so long.”

He pushes in a single finger down to the webbing, holding it there. Castiel whimpers, arching. After so many endless, frustrating hours behind the wheel, fighting the nag and chaf of simmering arousal, this one slender intrusion was easily enough to push him to the mean edge, the band around him serving it’s purpose as he swells.

“You don’t have to worry about anything anymore, just let me help you.” He sooths, finally - _fuck finally_ \- wrapping a slick hand around Castiel and milking the shaft in a slow pull. Eyes shut, tears scorching the insides of his lids, Castiel sobs from deep in his chest.

Clutch the sheets as Dean’s hand twisted. _Fuck fuck._

Seal tongue against teeth so that he won’t beg with words. _Faster- Jesus please go faster..._

Buck slowly blind into the slick knowing hand that never moves faster but knows just how to wring pleasure from him in the most proficient way.

“There we go. Feels good, right? I know it’s been hard angel, but you’re here now. I want you to try to come for me, nice and easy, ok?”

He doesn't take off the ring, so that when his finger finds and massages the swollen nub of Castiel's prostate, his orgasm hits long and slow, drawn out in an excruciating thread while Castiel sobs, stutters his way through the severity of his relief.


	2. Chapter 2

His phone buzzes again, but Dean ignores it, deciding instead to add a few chopped scallions to the steaming bowls in front of him. The last two texts had been from Sam, and odds were good this one would be nothing but a string of curses with perfect punctuation. The thought has him whistling a happy tune before he can stop himself. He loads up the tray and carefully backs his way through the bedroom door. Cas is only just waking, sleep confused in the rumpled mound of blankets and looking around the room for something he can’t find.

“Hungry?” Dean sets the tray on its legs in front of Cas and sits down across from him on the mattress. Huge white bowls of breakfast scramble, the bright yellow eggs dotted with crispy bits of bacon, potato, pepper. There’s a glittering bowl of berries to share and a carafe of coffee. Castiel leans over and raises an eyebrow. 

“This is for me?”

“Well,” Dean scratches the back of his head, a little sheepish. “I figured you must be starving so...dig in.”

Sitting up straighter, Castiel goes straight for the coffee, sighing in contentment only once half the mug is empty. Dean pulls his bowl to his chest and immediately sets course to demolish everything in sight. 

“What time is it?” Castiel hasn’t see any clocks around, only the heavy chrome and leather watch Dean wears. 

“‘Bout ‘leven,” Another text alert sounds in the other room and Dean only snorts, ignoring it.

“Eleven! I had no idea I’d been asleep so long, why didn’t you wake me?”

“Cause, Cas, this is your last chance to sleep in for a while. Wanted to let you enjoy it.”

He’d been watching for the change of expression and notes with some pleasure the way the delicate bite of food pauses before Castiel’s mouth, returning to the bowl untouched as he considers Dean’s words.

“So you want to- “

“Eat.” He cut off gently. “Trust me.”

He does, only picking at half his food. It’s clear his mind is too preoccupied for breakfast when Dean notices the fine tremor of nerves that clink Castiel's fork tines against the china. He gathers up the dishes on the tray and moves it to the bedside table.

“You’re going to have a schedule.” The firm tone sending Castiel’s backbone upright. “I’ve got a business to run that’s not going to hold off for me much longer, but you’re a priority Cas, so I want to make sure we’ve got a few clear ground rules for what goes on here, ‘kay?”

“Yes,” Castiel fidgets with his hands, awkward, until they come to rest in his lap.

“Wake up is at seven now, every day, unless I say otherwise. Sam and I take turns cooking, so you’ll never have to worry about that. You’re job will be to get ready, I’ll show you what I expect in a minute, but you must be finished and at the table for breakfast by no later than 8 o’clock.”

“That sounds….fine.”

Dean bites on a grin, watching Castiel try to work out where the kink was in this situation.

“I put your clothes away in the drawer over there if you need them, but around the house, I don't want you wearing any. I figured that if you got dressed, that could be your signal that you’re not in the mood to scene. I’d also want you to put something on if we have company, which doesn’t happen too much. Does that sound ok?”

“Yes…...Sir.” He tests out. 

It’s started. Just like that. Dean’s not sure what to call the sensation Cas’ words ignite, but gravity recognises whatever is there and pulls it unkindly from his sternum to his gut. 

“Good, come on,” Dean rises and moves over to a sliding, wood slatted door set into the wall by the bed. Castiel had assumed it was a closet, but Dean opens it to reveal a modest bathroom. Yesterday there hadn’t been much time to take everything in, it hadn’t occurred to him that the dimensions of the built in room didn’t match the interior size of the bedroom. 

Inside there’s a glass stall shower and a clawfoot tub, a small sink and cabinet, on the other side of which a partition hides the toilet. It’s all very neatly organized and spotlessly clean.

Dean  shows him where everything is, his own set of new toiletries, details exactly how he’s expected to prepare himself each morning. There’s a slim hose attachment in the shower with a rounded aluminum nozzle. Castiel blushes his way through the instruction, mumbling how he’s given himself enemas before, but never with something this fancy. On the counter Dean’s left an array of shaving supplies, and though Castiel was already in the habit of grooming himself regularly, Dean makes it clear he expects him smooth.

“Just the undercarriage though, don’t get all crazy and Bic yourself head to toe. Last thing...”

From under the sink he takes out a brand new plug and a bottle of lube, enjoying the involuntary flush bleeding out over Castiel’s neck and chest.

“We can move up to a bigger one later, but not too much.” He kisses up Castiel’s throat, chasing the color, palming his ass and spreading his cheeks. “I want you to feel something inside you all the time, want you to  _ need  _ it, need this perfect little ass filled up every minute. Go ahead, get yourself ready and meet me outside.”

With a final playful slap and a grin, Dean leaves him to it. 

He waits in the living room until the pipes sound before taking out the glossy black cardboard box from where he’d stashed it, opening the lid and feeling his heart race. He places it just so on the dining table then sits at the far end. He gets up. He looks at his phone, doesn’t read the texts from Sam. He knows what they’ll say. 

_ Tell him. _

But Sam’s just being stupid, of course he can’t tell him, not when they’ve only just started. Not when Castiel could still so easily leave. Sam’s got all this untapped romance gunking up his works, he thinks everyone should go around spouting off their feelings on one another. But not everyone works like that and not everyone wants to hear it, and besides, it’s not like it’s a big deal, Cas doesn’t need to know. He’s a professional and he’s been in the lifestyle long enough to know what the hell he’s doing. What does it matter if he’s never had a full time sub before? And yes, there is the fact that Cas is the first person he’s ever brought into his home, but that’s not as big a deal as Sam seems to think either. There was a reason the playroom had its own entrance, his partners tended to have a very specific agenda and were never much interested in  _ getting to know _ him. Besides, he liked to keep things separate. 

_ They  _ liked to keep things separate, Sam forgets that he agreed to all that when they bought the place. So this wasn’t just some quirk of his.

And let’s be honest, in this city, nobody was going to take two trains and walk eleven blocks way the hell out here for an average vanilla one night stand when they could just do it in the bar’s bathroom or the back of a cab like every other normal, tax paying New Yorker.

Cas trusts him, he’s come all this way for Dean to train him, to take care of him, if he tells him that this is a first for him too, he might not want to stay, or worse yet, he’ll feel unsafe. Dean wouldn’t be able to stand it if Cas felt that way. And he  _ has  _ trained subs before, likely hundreds at this point.

He’s just never kept one.

The sound of the bathroom door opening pries Dean out of his thoughts. He jets across the room to skid into his chair, remembers the plan and nearly topples himself lunging over to the counter to snag an orange. By the time Castiel pads out of the bedroom, hair still damp and skin pink, Dean’s leaning back at the head of the table, casually tossing the fruit as if he’d been patiently waiting all this time.

He points to the box. “Got you a little something.”

Castiel goes over, traces the long edge as if afraid to open in for fear of spoiling the surprise. From this end, if he looks hard enough, a few faint creases from yesterday’s ropes can still be seen on Castiel’s skin. A hard thrill runs through him. Pride, disappointment. It’s the only marker Cas wears right now, and even though the man is in his home, has traveled all this way and now stands naked and awaiting his instruction, it‘s not enough. 

Not enough.

“Go on, open it up.”

The orange sails up, then back down, and Dean hears the soft sound Cas makes just before it hits his palm. 

“Sir- “ 

“I like collars fine, but this is more my style. I’d like you to wear them, is that alright with you?”

The cuffs are deep brown leather, stiff and smooth. Like the collar given to him on the island, the brass ring at the center of each is flush with the leather, tacked down with three slim but sturdy straps and allowing just enough room to slip a rope or a clip beneath it. Two thick buckles fasten the back, which Castiel cinches into place with nimble fingers. Once he’s gotten them on, Dean watches in pleasure as his submissive strokes the curvature of the the rings, swipes along the soft sheen and tests the strength of the buckles. Their evident quality will stand up to anything Dean chooses to do with them, Sam made them after all.

“Thank you,” Castiel all but whispers, unable to take his eyes off them, turning his hands over to admire.

“Up you go, angel” The tabletop gets a solid pat. “Hands and knees.” 

With only a minor look of confusion, which Dean‘s pleased to see he shakes off just as quickly, Castiel draws himself up on the table, letting out a deep breath, unsure but waiting. 

“Come on over here, nice and slow.” 

He’d been right, it was a very nice sight indeed to watch Cas slink his way down the line of his dining room table on all fours, the play of muscle, the drag of graceful limbs. Castiel’s intuition has always been something to marvel at, particularly in light of the knowledge that a month ago, the man had been no more than part time voyeur, the concepts and desires all locked up in his head, untested. That same intuition rocks Castiel back on his heels before Dean, sitting with knees splayed at the perfect angle, hands demurely resting on thighs.

Tilting his head up to the vision in front of him, leaning back in his chair, a sudden thrust of impatience seized Dean’s hands to fists, clinching his jaw. He wants it  _ now _ , he wants the framework already built with Cas inside, he wants all the agitated, frizzing possibilities to already exist. A million Castiels overlapping in every display of submission, right now, before him. 

It makes him pause to find composure, which Castiel, features alert but calm, has likely interpreted as deliberate. Dean’s not one to ever really lose his head, and now would be the worst possible time for that to happen, while Castiel is so very green and trusting. He holds on tight to the arms of his chair and uses the time to allow Castiel to adjust to the sensation of kneeling.

“Every morning, eight a.m., this is what you do. Doesn’t matter if it’s me sitting here, or Sam, or if you’re all alone. You crawl right to this spot and get yourself ready.”

“And what does that mean?” 

“It means you’re going to stroke yourself, touch anywhere you like except your hole. Are you wearing the plug I gave you?” 

On cue Castiel squirms, an involuntary rotation of his hips at the sensation of the toy stretching him. His erection had been languidly aware the whole morning, but at Dean’s word it fills, steadily swollen and darkening nicely.

“I have it in, Sir.”

“Good,” Propping his feet up on the table, Dean digs his fingers into the orange, slowly peeling away the rind stip by strip. “Now let me watch.”

Delicately at first, perhaps timid, Castiel trails fingers around the curves of his dick, teasing the soft contours of his balls. He watches Dean until he can’t, until the sensation has to be chased, so he chases it, falling back, propped with one hand on the table behind him. The open column of his neck, the tight shift twist of stomach muscle as his hand speeds up are exquisite. Little panting sounds ride each breath, a light sheen of sweat shimmers over Castiel’s skin. Plunging both thumbs into the giving core of his fruit, Dean splits the orange in half and plucks a section off, snapping it between neat white teeth and letting the juice slick his lips deliberately before he sucks them clean. Castiel whines and closes his eyes, so close already.

“Hands on your thighs, sweetheart. Just like that. Now open up.”

It takes more than a few beats for Castiel to open his eyes again. Dean’s patient, holding out a bright section of orange just out of range so that Castiel must lean forward, weight pushed onto his hands, to reach it.

“This, “ Watching the constriction of his submissive’s throat, lips wetted. “Is how you’ll eat.”

“Up here?” Castiel pauses, curious. “Not on the floor?”

Dean slides a finger into Cas’ mouth, resting it on the bed of his tongue, letting him suckle at it gently. “There’ll be plenty of time on the floor for you, but meal times I like to look at something pretty, and you make a real nice sight like this, let me tell you.” He pulls his finger out slowly, watching the drag against Castiel’s full pink lips and it all finally becomes too much. Standing abruptly, the chair shoved back and nearly over, Dean stalks to the nearest drawer and back again with a bottle of lube. 

He doesn’t waste any time with niceties, grabs onto Cas’ hips and hauls him off the table, spinning him around and pinning him bodily face down. One hand holds Castiel by the neck as the other frantically tears open belt, pants. Dean feels ready to break his teeth on the urgency, the need to be inside Castiel. The plug is twisted out and thrown to the side, lube sloshed hastily between them seconds before Dean presses in slow and inescapable, forcing a place for himself within Castiel’s tight, unholy heat. It’s so immediately much Castiel wails, not in pain, though considering Dean’s size and the little prep given is sure to be present, but with abject relief. His body coils and bucks, trying to work down harder, force more of Dean inside, but it does nothing but undulate the clutching muscles of his core, Dean’s too heavy atop him and so very very strong. Snapping hips forward, Dean finds good, sturdy holds on Castiel’s body and lays in.

“This what you wanted angel? Cause this is what you’re getting. My pretty sub, in my home,” he takes one of Castiel’s legs, shoving his knee up onto the the table for a deeper angle. It makes the man beneath him shake and cry out, arms outstretched and holding the edges of the table for dear life. “Gonna fuck you just like you need, baby. God the things I wanna do to you Cas.  _ Fuck-- fuck!  _ “

Punching out rapid fire thrusts, every nerve in Dean’s body narrow and condensed. It’s never come on him this quickly before, so close to the surface all it takes is Castiel, begging, writhing, cuffed and pinned at Dean’s command, and his cock floods too quickly and erupts. Shoving his hips in harder, every last drop forced deep, because Castiel  _ needs  _ his come. There is no higher reasoning, no outside recognition looking in, just this one primal thought, perfect instinct that this body he holds was made to receive his seed.

His frenzy won’t let him wait; the flood of post orgasm hormones spur him on rather than settle him down. Flipped over and dazed, Dean has both his sub’s knees over his shoulders before Castiel can finish his sound of surprise. Without pause he swallows him down, determined- and very well equipped- to bring Cas off just as quickly. 

“Oh _ nnuhh-- _ ! Oh my god Sir what do I-- ? Can I come?” Castiel pleads, neck straining with the weight of his uplifted head while he tries to watch.

“Give it to me Cas,” Dean pants between the ragged force of a breath and the dive back down -- hungry sucking moan, feet planted solid on the ground. The history of Dean’s self-bred command, his cultivated knowledge of how best to get what he wants, can be found in the exact depth of his throat and the undulating, tidal pull of his mouth along the circumference of Castiel’s shaft. Three more devilishly accurate shoves to the root and the shiver ran along Dean’s tongue, the salt spiked flavor he was after bursting thick over his palate, sliding down a greedy throat. 

He looks beautiful, Dean thinks, peering up as he continues to suckle. Shivering, the filmy heat of his body outlined on the glossy wood of the table, Castiel tries to wriggle away, too oversensitive, but a large hand to his belly stops the backward inch. Pressing the heels of both hands to his eyes, Castiel whines, resigned but promptly subdued until Dean takes pity. This was only an introduction, after all, of what it meant to take what Dean decided to give.

Staring up that the ceiling, Castiel takes a moment to breath. 

“Coming here was the right choice.”

| | |

The rest of the day is spent mostly relaxing. The intent is to relax, and Dean frames their activities as such, though Castiel finds he’s too keyed up to reach any sort of leisurely state. After the very enthusiastic start to their day, Dean sits back into the sofa with his sub stretched out over his lap so that he can pet him calm and work the plug back into place at a glacial pace. Even with the touch of soreness lacing his rim, the lube slick nudge and twist, nudge and twist, wears down the choppy edges of his sensitized nerves until the low simmer heat is back and Castiel is rocking his hips subtly on Dean’s lap. This could be very soothing, his mind half unwound, attempting to drift, but the sharp leather scent of the couch against his cheek, pelvis dropped heavy against Dean’s hard, denim tight thighs, the hand of his Dom all tally up to things he’s wanted too much for too long and is now on the cusp of claiming. 

The plug pops suddenly into place. 

Castiel finally gets a full tour. The staircase climbing the wall leads to a library, half the ceiling made of tilted panels of glass, the walls filled with books, a scatter of mismatched seating making for a very inviting spot. Castiel can imagine long afternoons tucked away up here, rain pattering overhead and soft grey light. He almost doesn’t notice the door, which Dean opens, beckoning. 

“This here’s Sammy room. Listen, you may have noticed that I’m not laying down a ton of rules right now, I figured it’d be too much to take in all at once. I’m more of a learn by doing kind of guy anyway, but this here is in the top five, so I need you to remember. In Sammy’s room, Sam is the Dom.” He levels Cas with a weighted look and is pleased to see it land.

“This is Sam’s space.” He peers past Dean’s shoulder, impressions of objects, but the room is too dark to see. 

“I’m your Dom everywhere else, my word trumps the Queen of England... unless you cross this threshold. You do that and you’re in Sam’s world. Not sayin’ he’s gonna wrap you in cellophane and piss down your throat if you’re dropping off the laundry, but in this house the expectation is that anyone with access understands the consequences. Do you understand?”

“I do. I- “ At that moment, Dean switches on the light and Castiel freezes. Considering the modern lines of the rest of the apartment, this was not what he was expecting. Or maybe it was too on the mark to have been considered a possibility.

“I know, it’s like a fifteen year old goth girl’s wet dream.”

Castiel barks a surprised laugh, covers his mouth. “It’s very…..ornate.” Dean laughs, too, enjoying the novelty of having someone around who isn’t so blinded by the prospect of Sam’s dick to see how ridiculous he can be. “Is he a Victorian era vampire poet? How did he get that bed in here?”

The bed in question sits as the clear centerpiece, heavy, baroquely carved mahogany canopy nearly the size of two kings. It has vaulted arches. It has spires. 

_ Everything  _ in the bedroom is black, the contrasts coming from texture: lacquer, fur, silk, iron, velvet. There is an overwhelming amount of velvet. Castiel’s mind immediately questions how much time the younger brother spends on managing lint.

“We had to build it in here, or more like I had to. There was no way I was explaining to a bunch of union carpenters that this monstrosity was for my kid brother.”

“Is your room the same?” Castiel turns quickly, his heart had been jumpy all morning, but this time it tugs at his voice. “The rules, I mean. If say, one of Sam’s subs entered, would they be subject to your control?”

He doesn’t want to sound jealous. He can’t be jealous, this is Dean’s life, his interest and experience in this sort of lifestyle are the only reason they were able to meet. Dean had told him, back on the island, that this was something he’d been pursuing since he was young, the calculations were easy to guess. But Castiel wondered about the ghosts here, shades of other subs. 

“I- uhh- yeah. You could say that. But Sam’s subs aren’t  _ allowed  _ in my room. See, I’ve got this boy that just drives me crazy,” Crowding up into Cas’ space, Dean took control of his naked hips, fingers testing the give of his flesh as he was herded gently backwards. “And what if I’ve got him all tied up in there? What if I’ve had a long hard day and all I want to do is play with him until he begs? Wouldn’t want to get interrupted by some nosy sub that isn’t even  _ mine _ .”

They land in a tangle half on a round floor cushion, mouths already seeking. Castiel can’t even remember the last time he kissed someone with only that intent, with nowhere else to go. 

Maybe he never has.

| | |

Sam arrives in the evening. The sudden noise wakes Castiel from the light sleep he’d drifted into, the grind of the sliding front door, Sam’s voice already shouting that he was sorry but he couldn’t stay away any more-- 

“-- and where the hell are you guys anyway? Dean?”

With a firm hand to the shoulder, Dean holds back any attempt Castiel might make to stand at the new arrival. Southern bred manners, after all, don’t mean the same thing to a Dom. 

He’d been kneeling at Dean’s feet for…..an hour? More? He actually has no idea. It had been too easy to fall asleep, the soft cushion beneath his knees, head guided gently down to rest on Dean’s lap. He’d chosen a book and didn’t offer Castiel another glance, finding his page and pushing his thumb into his sub’s mouth, something to occupy it. Castiel had started sucking enthusiastically, only to have his lower jaw grasped by the rest of Dean’s hand. A single shake, just a warning, to let Cas know that he wasn’t the one that chose what happened here. Dean released his jaw and left his thumb, stroking the pad along the velvety muscle in silent praise when Castiel relaxed, let himself simply accept the intrusion with no self guided goal.

The thunder of Sam bounding up the stairs jerks Castiel’s head up, the thumb sliding wetly from his mouth as a pulse of irrational panic jolts him. Sam will catch them, he thinks in the cotton haze of waking. 

“Open,” Dean doesn’t look stern, but his tone leaves no room for argument. The minute Castiel parts his lips, two long fingers take their place almost to his throat. He looks up, but the smile on Dean’s face is for Sam.

“There you are!” Sam drops down next to his brother stretching out his long legs. “I got Thai food if you’re hungry. How’s he settling in?”

“Going great,” The fingers in Castiel’s mouth begin a lazy push in and out. It makes him self conscious, having Sam see him this way, and he’s not totally sure why. Gradient heat rises on his cheeks as he tries not to look directly at either of them, which is hard since they are both so very obviously staring down at him, discerning professionals considering his standing. “He’s got a few habits we gotta work out. He can take an order, but he second guesses things. He’ll get there, though, he’s very eager to please.” 

“That so? Can I say hi?” And the way he says it- drawn out, slung low- it means something to the brothers.

Dean pulls his fingers from Castiel’s mouth, “Sure, in fact, why don’t you get him ready for dinner? That ok angel?” Castiel blinks up at both of them, over-warm and on edge. He nods.

“Come here, Cas.” Sam offers him a sweet smile as he guides him carefully into his lap, straddling his thighs. His hands are much larger than Deans, spanning his hips as they slot him in place. Sam nuzzles up beneath his jaw, nipping at the skin there and trailing the tip of his tongue down the cords of his neck. Castiel sighs into the attention, but still manages to catch, out of the corner of his eye, how Dean passes something easily into Sam’s hand as he rises to leave the room.

Before he can look to see what it is, Sam has cupped his face, drawing him into a languid, probing kiss. Dreamy and carnal, Sam’s a very sensual kisser, no hard pressure, no teeth. Whereas Dean likes to stake a claim, mark and consume and set Castiel on fire with the diamond focus skill of his mouth, Sam seems content to warm him slowly, until Castiel all but melts against him. It’s only then that Sam tucks his hands between them, fastening the cockring with a deft hand.

“There we go,” leaning back, he takes a good look at the sub, reaching up to tease at his nipples until he gasps. “Gosh you are a pretty thing. Hungry?”

Cas isn’t even remotely interested in food, the leather band tucking his balls in tight and forcing more blood into his awakening cock. His rim twitches a few times against the plug, shifting it inside him, reminding him of how good it would feel to have something larger in there.

They head downstairs, Cas trailing behind, so he doesn’t see right away what it is that makes Sam laugh. 

“You’re an evil fucking genius, you know that?”

At the head of the table, Dean sits with his chair slanted out, the meal laid out for two, takeout containers neatly arranged. It’s what glistening at the center that pulls a hot little sound from Castiel.

A black silicon dildo, suction cupped to the table surface and already dripping with lube.

“Over here sweetheart, let me see you.” Dean gestures, pulling his sub between his legs when he’s close. “Lean on me so I can get this out.” He reaches between Cas’ legs to get a grip on the plug, twisting it out quickly and setting it aside. “Do you know what I want you to do?”

“I can guess,” Cas eyes the dildo again, his ass already squeezing around the phantom girth. 

“Well get on up, and make sure you face us. I like to watch you take it.”

Determined to make Dean happy, and spurred on somewhat by Sam’s eyes on him as well, Castiel moves around to the side of the table, hitching himself up and crawling the distance. He’s actually quite close to the brothers, Sam taking the seat to his right, Dean at the head of the table grinning as he pulls in his chair, legs spread, hands spread flat, shoulders back. He looks like a king, Castiel thinks. No, a conqueror, a beautifully barbaric one, awaiting his entertainment. Crawling forward, over the swaying phallus, Cas takes hold of it between his legs and slowly guides it into place. Rearing up on his knees, he grasps one cheek, spreading it, sliding the wetness of the lubed cockhead around his already slick hole then sinking down a little too quickly. That first inch reminds him this thing is much larger than the plug, a soft cry pinching his throat at the rude stretch. But there’s no time to wait, they’re watching him, and he’s not sure what Sam thinks but Dean’s eyes are dark, breathing a little labored, the curl of his lips hungry. 

“More,” he orders, and Cas obeys, sinking halfway down, moaning. He lifts up, the wood beneath his knees finding every boney joint, then bares down until another two inches fits inside. It’s tapered, subtly, which he didn’t notice before but is fast becoming acquainted with, every little extra bit flaring wider, causing a delicious burn.

“All of it.” Dean growls. He’s not eating, neither one of them are, they’re waiting for Cas. They’re waiting for Castiel to impale himself fully before they can start, and that thought shivers through Castiel until he drops suddenly down the rest of the way, the fake silicon balls nestled up against his ass. He has to close his eyes, he needs one second to himself where he can’t see the way the brothers look at him. “Don’t move.”

He won’t. He can’t he can’t he can’t. He’s so terribly full and his instincts wail at him to chase the feeling, to push off and sink down over and over until he’s satisfied. But he wants to be perfect, he  _ has  _ to be. He’s got to show Dean. Someone in this world has to know how much he needs this, to submit. 

It’s never made total sense to him, the boxed up knowledge that he can be good like this, that he’s sure of it. He’s always been sure, but no one’s ever wanted that from him.

He opens his eyes at the sound of containers opening. The brothers aren’t looking at him anymore, passing food between them, stealing shrimp from each other’s plates. It’s all so very casual a scene and yet not, the sensations riding up his spine making him so exquisitely aware of them. They watch without watching, Dean taking in every shiver, every bead of sweat cooling Castiel’s overheated skin without ever glancing up.

“So that Charger’s back, the green one?” Sam says around a mouthful of summer roll. “Mr. Finnley’s got some  _ ideas _ .”

“Goddamn, I mean, I’ll take the business and all, but that car’s done. It’s perfect, he’s just gonna fuck it all over to hell if he keeps trying to upgrade. It’ll be a goddamned Prius when we’re done if he keeps up.”

“I think he’s just got a man crush on Bobby, like he’s living out some transference fantasy where he’s a grease monkey in Brooklyn and we’re all his bros.” 

“Tell me you told Bobby this.” Dean spiraled a neat bundle of pad thai onto his fork.

“He threw a water bottle at my head and told me to tell the guy to fuck off.”

Cupping his other hand underneath, Dean holds up the forkful of food, finally returning his attention to the trembling sub in front of him. “Eat.”

The very picture of a Dom, he doesn’t move closer, or make an easy offering, so Castiel is forced to rock forward on his hands and knees to take the bite, the dildo sliding almost all the way out. The moment his lips close around the fork, Dean smiles, sweet as sin, then turns back to his brother. And Castiel has no choice but to sit back on his heels, the silicone length spearing him open, one plaintive whine muffled as he chews.

“Oh my God, Dean, what if I give Ellen a call? She might know where we can get a junker we could sell the guy, let him shell out for a ground up resto, he could bang around under the hood with Bobby for another…..four, five months?” Sam offers Cas a snap peas with his fingers.

“He’ll kill you, you know, if he finds out.” Dean laughed, already twirling his fork into another bite for Cas. “Come on sweetheart.”

Rock forward. Rock back.

“Well _ I _ think it’s worth it.”

The brothers’ conversation devolves into laughter and boyish plans to torment whoever this poor man named Bobby was. But Castiel can barely focus on that. Because as easy as the banter is between them, as casual an arrangement they make with their posture or tasks, it’s clear to him that they were watching. Pacing, watching. Keeping him in constant motion so that the meal is no more than a pretense and Castiel is actively fucking himself back and forth on the toy. By the time the plates are clean he’s visibly heaving from the effort and the growing discomfort of his position.

“What’d ya say Sammy, you ready for dessert?”

He sucks on his lip, “What are we having?”

Dean walks around and guides Castiel down from the table, gathering him in his arms and gentling the shivering down to sighs, kissing across his hairline and grinding his palm against the hot need of Cas’ erection. Sam’s wandered over to the living space, spreading himself out with the pretense of checking his phone, giving them a moment.

“You’ve been so good for me tonight, taking that just how I wanted, I’d like to give you a choice. I know Sam here would love a chance to fuck you good and hard right now, or I could let you suck my cock and show him what a gorgeous mouth you’ve got. Your pick.”

Castiel buries his face in Dean’s neck for a moment, gathering his wits and trying not to wantonly grind into the hand pressed firmly against his crotch. He takes a deep breath, savoring the distinctly masculine scent of Dean’s skin, the way it makes him feel both safe and on edge with the dark salt brine of lust and sweat. He reels back, large blue eyes question-wide.

“What do  _ you  _ want?”

Dean huffs in amusement. “You shouldn’t pass this up Cas. I don’t tend toward giving subs an option all that often.”

“But I like not having a choice. Or- “ He shakes his head, clearing his thoughts. Dean makes it so easy to forget everything but the immediate sensations he wove inside of Castiel every time they were together. “I like giving up my choice to  _ you _ . It makes me feel like….feel like you own me.” 

He mumbles through this last part, partially ashamed but mostly worried about what Dean will think of his admission. It sounds needy. It felt needy, to want Dean to take him, own him, surround him with the implacable force of his dominance. He wants to sink into Dean and never come up for air.

But Dean isn’t shied off by Castiel’s words. In fact, he shoves in closer, taking Castiel jaw in his hand and holding him steady so that the sub can fully register the passing look of savagery that lights his bright green eyes.

“You want me to own you angel?” He growls straight into Castiel’s mouth, fingers hooked into the flesh of his cheeks. “Do you even know what you’re asking me?”

Did he? He found he didn’t care, not with the way Dean was looking at him now. 

“Sir- ” he wasn’t sure what he was about to say, there was a real danger he might reveal too much in that moment. The need to come, the need to speak, the need to open himself up at Dean’s feet unspools within him at such an untidy pace it overwhelms him. “ _ Just take me _ .”

Dean heaves out one contracted breath, holding himself in check, but from what Castiel’s not sure.

“Sam!” 

He doesn’t get to see the look Dean gives his brother, the obvious communication that he hasn’t been around long enough to read. He’s spun quickly and propelled forward by Dean’s strong hand, stopped once he reaches the sofas.

“Kneel.” 

Castiel drops quickly onto the rug, just as Sam is standing. He can hear Dean walking away, moving into his bedroom, and he doesn’t look up from the crooked, handwoven details of the wool carpet beneath him, but at his peripheral Sam is undressing in quick, efficient movements. Dean is back, dropping supplies onto the opposite seat, coming around to snatch up Castiel’s hands and bind the cuffs in front of him with a short length of white rope. He does catch the jerk of Dean’s head at Sam, and the way Sam sits back on the couch, legs spread, as if it were his idea. Moving behind him, he slots a thick gag of white silk into Cas’ mouth, forcing his head up as he ties it securely into place. Sam is stroking himself now, languidly with one hand while the other holds it up for Cas to appreciate. Castiel’s eyes go a little wide. Dean is large, easily the largest cock he’s ever had and endowed enough to put most adult stars on notice should he ever chose a new vocation, but Sam….

He tenses up slightly, the soft emptiness his session with the toy had left him with seemingly disappearing as his muscles contract in apprehension. 

Sam’s cock is another thing altogether.

“You know what we’re going to do here, sweetheart?” Dean’s crouching at his side now, holding Castiel by the jaw so that he can’t look away from Sam and the look of dark avidity that’s come over his usually sweet features. “Sammy here is going to sit you all the way down on his big, fat prick and get a chance to enjoy your sweet little ass for as long as he wants.”

Dean tosses a bottle over to his brother who catches it easily, uncapping it and drizzling lube all over his cock without looking away from Cas. There’s something almost primitive in the way he strokes himself now, smearing the lube till his shaft is glistening, breathing heavy through his nose. 

“I bet you’re going to feel so tight to him,” Dean growls in his ear. “You always feel so tight to me, no matter how much I fuck you. Imagine what it will be like for Sam. He hasn’t had anyone since we got back from the island. Too busy covering for me while I was with you. He’s such a good brother.”

Dean makes a minor show of retrieving something from the other couch, a slim, blue plastic tube with looped finger holds and a plunger at one end. He very pointedly takes the lube from Sam and opens the syringe, filling the interior and fitting the plunger back into place. With a firm hand at his back, Dean pushes Castiel forward until he is resting on bound hands and knees, his head bracketed by Sam’s long muscular thighs.

“You need to stop, you snap your fingers. Got it?” And the moment Castiel nods, he pushes the syringe in without another pause, the cool flood of lube shooting up his insides. Dean fills it again, squirts another shock of lube into his ass and when he removes it, tosses it aside, a trail of slickness trickles out. 

Between the two of them, it’s  exceedingly quick work to manhandle Cas up onto Sam’s lap facing out. Shifting forward on his seat, Sam gets his hands around the backs of Castiel’s thighs and leans back. And with his hands tied and nothing to brace himself on, Castiel is tipped backwards into Sam, suspended, legs folded up to his chest. Dean takes a seat at the edge of the coffee table, leaning in.

Sam undulates his hips a few times, teasing at Cas’ splayed hole with the head of his cock. It feels enormous, and being held spread like this makes him so vulnerable, Castiel tenses up slightly.

“You’ll want to relax, sweetheart. Make whatever sound you need to, but don’t you dare come until I tell you.”

Switching his grip, Sam maneuvers one arm under both of Cas’ knees, wrapping him in tight while the other hand moves down to guide his dick into place. He’s so incredibly strong, Castiel thinks, the heavy muscles of Sam’s arm locking around him, holding his full weight without any sign of strain. The blunt press of his cockhead insists against Castiel’s rim, and there’s so much lube, it’s dripping from him steadily even now, that even though his body resists some, it only takes a little bit of force for Sam to shove the tip inside. Castiel screams behind the gag. Good god the man is splitting him apart, and there’s no hope of it easing up, he’d seen quite clearly the way the rest of Sam’s shaft swelled slightly larger than what he’s just taken. 

Sam releases him just a bit, letting gravity slide Cas down another increment. He sobs, the wet silk muffling his cries sweetly. There’s no way he can take all of it, just this little bit it stretching him wider than he can handle, the cold fire burn coiling around his rim, singing up his skin and stinging tears into his eyes. Without meaning to, he tries to scramble back, leverage up Sam’s body and away from the intrusion. 

“Oh no you don’t,” Sam growls, amused, into his ear. He shifts again, gripping both of Cas’ legs in each hand and takes back the measure of space inside of Castiel that he’d lost. After that he doesn’t thrust, doesn’t move the sub up and down to work his way in, just holds him fast and lets his own body weight draw him inevitably down. If he were to thrash now, he would only just hurt himself, and it takes too much effort just to breath anyway, to remind himself how to inhale and let go. Shaking from the strain wears him out, the invasion of Sam’s cock an agonizingly slow one, and before he’s even made it into his lap, Castiel is limp from exhaustion, though his own erection is alive and begging. 

Dean’s been watching, fixated. There’s a look on his face that Castiel’s never seen before, a little wild, a little ferocious. 

“How does he feel Sammy?” Dean’s voice gravel and greed. He looks Cas dead in the eye and dares him to look away.

“Shit Dean,” his words strangled. “He’s so fucking good. I love when he struggles.” And to make his point, Sam juts his hips a fraction, licking up Castiel’s neck when he arches away. Sam laughs dirty, then grinds his hips all the way flush, seating the sub on his iron hard length. Gasping around the gag, Castiel throws his head back against Sam’s shoulder. There’s nothing he can do, speared fully, the monstrous girth hitting every sensitive crevice at once. Sam leans back a little farther and holds him in place as he begins a deliberately slow piston in and out. “Oh my  _ god  _ Dean I could fuck your boy for hours.”

Rising, Dean stands over the both of them. He runs a thumb over Cas’ lips, stretched as they are around the gag. Over the rise of his cheekbone, down his jaw, coming to rest lightly around his throat. Just the slightest pressure, more posessive than dangerous.

“Harder Sam.” The brothers regard each other as Sam holds on tighter and lays in. 

Castiel cries out and the terrible, exquisite sensation, drag and spread, overfilled and held down at all angles. Sam is fucking him in earnest now, and he doesn’t think it can get any more overwhelming until Dean wraps his other hand around his sub’s bound up cock and works in a steady counter rhythm to his brother. Everything is on fire, the central core of him drawn in by Dean’s hand and forced out by Sam’s body. He thrashes his head, pleads with his eyes until his Dom pulls the gag free and holds it like a collar.

“You have to beg for it angel. Beg me and I’ll give it to you.”

And he’s implying release, he’d give Cas that right now at his word, but that’s not what Castiel does.

“Your cock- “ he gasps, air still hard to capture while Sam rams into him still. “Sir, please! Please let me have you, I need it….”

Both brothers curse, Dean from the shock-fire thrill of what Cas is asking for, Sam from the new angle he’s found. He’s not sure how they ever learned to move this fast, this in sync, but a quick burst violence of movement and he’s on his knees, held up by Sam’s solid grip, Dean’s erection pressed to his lips. He doesn’t pause, not when he has what he needs most right here. He can’t get Dean into his mouth fast enough, and the moment Dean slides down his throat is the moment Sam frees the clasp around the cock ring. 

Dean barks orders Castiel can’t understand, he’s too stuffed full, expertly used, Sam shoving him onto Dean’s cock, Dean slamming him back onto Sam. They’re going to kill him, he thinks, he’s going to explode or collapse or dissolve because the physics behind what these two are doing to him, the measure of their force and the pleasure they’re igniting in him that’s too much to bare, isn’t something he was prepared for. Their hands are everywhere, pawing and twining around the handholds they’ve made of his body. Dean’s got a hand gripped in Castiel’s hair, forcing his head slightly back so that he can watch his Dom through wet lashes. His jaw is going numb with pain, lips burning, saliva coating his mouth and chin, but even that feels good, because Dean’s expression is glorious. Mouth parted, eyes dark and glittering as he snarls on every other thrust and praises Cas with half bitten curses. 

“Come on baby, come with us taking you like this. Wanna wreck you Cas. God _ damn _ I want fuck you apart… _ ah ah _ ! Look at me angel, let me see those pretty blue eyes. We’re gonna  _ flood  _ your body with come, you ever feel that? This is what it means to be mine, your ass and your mouth and your sleep. Your food and sex and mind, they belong to  _ me  _ now, Cas.”

Sam has been a machine all this time, the metronome of his hips paced with heavy, gut deep grunts. “Dean!” He hollers, urgent, fingers digging. It doesn’t matter that Castiel has gone all but limp, hand propped futily against Dean’s chest while the Doms fall into sync and rut into him with terrible, overwhelming control. He can’t breathe, his body vibrates like crystal ready to shatter and when they both seize up, both hold him suspended and pump wave after wave deep into his body  _ together… _ .. 

  
Castiel has never come so hard in his life. It’s blinding darkness and the sense of something cracking, something beyond body, though he doesn’t have the word for it right now. He doesn’t have anything but the quivering rawness of a newly hatched thing, cored and pink in an undiscovered world.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s been well over a week, and Castiel still sometimes wakes up in an anxious thrall that this is not real.

But Dean _is_ real and the things they do are not figments born of want. Sometimes, when Dean has tied him up, and the blood pulses harder under his skin than it ever has, his mind wanders off to the oddest places. What errands he would be running if he were home right now. What lessons he would plan for classes, what students he would have to hand-hold though the rigors of comprehending literature. Those things existed, but this exists now, and the cocoon of this new set of circumstances tips him off balance even as it acts as an anchor.

He was Castiel Novak in that other life, and Castiel Novak had bills and neighbors and no time to update his ill fitting wardrobe and no time to do anything other than repeat yesterday again and again.

Here, he is Cas. He is angel or sweetheart. And here each morning is also the same, but there is never any way to predict Dean’s desires, so even the routine he’s created for his sub does not allows for complacency.

He wakes alone, each day, but it’s not lonely. Sometimes he can hear Dean moving about the loft, sometimes he can’t, but it doesn’t matter. He has a routine.

He was never asked to make the bed, but he always does. If there are clothes on the floor, (never his) he clears them. If there are toys about, he makes sure they are cleaned before putting them away. In the shower he does as expected, sometimes wincing at an overly sore body, sometimes simmering with the thoughts of what would be done to him that day.

The training unfolds more organically than Castiel anticipated. He’s not expected to keep his eyes down. So often Dean would husk out _look at me_ , that soon enough Castiel found himself constantly seeking out Dean’s gaze and holding it. It never gets any easier to handle. Dean’s focus on him is, at all times, absolute. What Castiel _is_ expected to do, is shadow Dean. Reading, watching the news, getting ready for work, always Castiel is there, ordered to his knees and awaiting Dean’s edict. His hands are tied most mornings after breakfast, front or back, there is no predictability. It’s the one thing Castiel learns quicker than anything else.

Dean is infatuated with ropes.

There’s not time for more elaborate bindings, proper shibari, in the mornings. Dean mostly sets his own schedule, but he’s never gone into work later than ten. A short cord of hemp through the rings of his cuffs and Dean is pulling him along through the apartment, never letting Cas out of his sight. Dean tells him directly on the second day, Cas is not allowed to sit on the chairs or sofas when they are playing without asking. He’s made to kneel at Dean’s feet when he’s washing the dishes or cleaning the counters. If Dean choses to watch tv, Castiel warms his cock or sits on his lap while Dean teases his nipples and sucks biting marks all over his neck.

And before he leaves for the day, Dean always fucks him. It doesn’t matter if Sam is around to see or not, or if they make it to the bedroom, which often they don’t, but it always comes suddenly, shoved down, flipped over, penetrated with an unrelenting push and taken in a frenzy. Castiel is never allowed to come then, and it’s a struggle, because there is a little bit of a sadist in Dean that likes to demand compliance and then do his best to break it down.

It scrapes the well stones of his self control to survive; Dean in the tight-leashed mania of his lust is something beautiful to see.

Only once is Dean not around for breakfast, an emergency at the shop calling him away. Sam easily takes over, feeding him by hand on the dining table as Castiel teases himself. But whereas Dean liked to display him up there, liked to savor the sight of Castiel like this each morning, Sam barely pays him any mind, reading his tablet, absently stroking Castiel’s thigh whenever he makes any pleading sound. Like a pet one is accustomed to ignoring.

Castiel has just taken a pause in his self ministrations when Sam’s phone rings. He had grown accustomed to the way Dean always pulled his reigns when he got too close too fast, but Sam had left him to it, likely relying on Cas to know his own limits and fully willing to punish him if he came when he wasn’t allowed to.

“What’s up?.......you’re kidding……fuck, seriously?.......well shit, that sucks. What’r you-- ok…...ok…..”

He hangs up.

“Is everything alright?” He’d never been told he couldn’t speak, but things were never a given with Sam. Evaluating Castiel for a moment, features unreadable, he finally nodded.

“They will be. But let’s get you down. I want to give you a spanking.”

Castiel balks for a moment, what had he done wrong? The thought briefly washes over him that whatever bad news Dean has given Sam, he now wants to take it out on Castiel.

“Not with the paddle, boy. This isn’t a punishment. Dean’s coming home early and he’ll need some cheering up.”

Castiel hops off the table and allows Sam to push him to his knees in the middle of the floor with an order not to move. Eyes down, hands behind his back. This isn’t just a spanking, he thinks with a shiver of expectation. But If Dean needed him, however Dean needed him, he would submit.

Without looking up from the floor, he hears locks shifting, a door opening, the sound of Sam maneuvering something large into the apartment from the playroom. Casters squeak as the thing is turned and set down at his side. He wants so badly to look, and if the heavy silence is anything to go by, Sam is watching him to see if he will. He hooks his fingers under his cuffs and focuses in on the woodgrain pattern of the floorboards.

The silence goes on an eternity.

“You’re such a well behaved thing, aren’t you?” Castiel almost jumps at the sound of the Dom’s voice. “Has Dean even had to punish you yet?”

It’s not entirely clear if this question is rhetorical or not. Manners are likely the best option. “No Sir.”

“No, not his pretty little angel.” He sounds far more amused than condescending. “Up here,” and he slaps his thigh in a way that sound like permission. Castiel hazards a glance up.

The bench isn’t something he’s seen before, and he’s not sure how he knows, but he’s certain that it’s something the brothers have designed themselves, Dean building the frame, Sam crafting the leather. And he’s not sure why he’s never made a clearer connection before, just how intermarried what they do for a living is with what they do for fun. Dean’s talent for steel and wood, building sturdy things with wide, calloused hands. Sam with leather and stitching, his careful eye for detail and sense of the dramatic.

A reclining bench, not unlike something in a gym, but lovely and sinister rather than strictly functional. Red leather pads out the long surfaces, brass grommets glinting from the dimples at the seams. The base is wide, with a bar along the front ornamented with several scarred brass rings. There are more embedded along the underside of the bench and padded T bar that bisects the top. Every piece of wood glows with the luster of an attentive hand and just looking at it makes Castiel’s insides liquefy with desperate, terrifying lust.

Sam is using it now like a throne.

“Stand here, turn around.” Castiel moves as directed between Sam’s thighs. Without any preamble, Sam palms his ass, squeezing, petting, running his thumb straight down the cleft and over the end of the plug. “This will need to come out.” He muses, almost to himself. There’s no tease when he works it out of Cas, tosses it to the floor. There’s no tease when he resumes his petting, clinical, like a butcher inspecting his cut.

“You’ve got nice skin tone, firm but pale. It might take me just a little bit longer to get you the right shade, but it’ll stay there for a good long while when I do. Color?”

“Green…” The word more breath than sound. He’s shaking.

“What was that?”

“Green.” He states, even though it cracks down the middle.

“Good. I’ll need you to be louder today Cas, you got me? Loud as you want, it’s not going to matter.”

With that he has Cas over his knees, his arms flailing on the descent before he manages to brace them on the floor. The first smack isn’t prefaced with any warning, or demand, just the flat crack of Sam’s hand that echos for one split second before Castiel registers the pain. He screams.

“Don’t come.” Another smack, same spot, and there’s no way Castiel could come from this kind of sting. Another, slightly lower. Castiel’s nails scrabble on the floorboards as he sobs. Sam’s got his other forearm braced against Castiel’s lower back, holding his hip with a sure hand. No change in pace, tempo. No change in strength, no syncopated pattern to throw off an expectation of the next blow. Sam works, measured and mapped, over every possible inch, one after the next. It’s probably worse than not knowing where the next blow is going to land, when. After a handful of strikes, Castiel knows exactly where the next one will be, how hard, how fast. His skin is on fire and the pain makes him quake and scream every single time. Sam, for his part, is unrelenting.

“One of the new guys broke in last night,” he states, perfectly friendly as he works Cas’ ass over with all professional skill. “Climbed in from an air vent, if you can believe it and tried to steal one of the cars. When he couldn’t open the garage door from the inside he tried to drive the car through it. All that did was smash up the front end and dent the door.” He laughs. He’s made it to Castiel’s upper left cheek.

_Smack……..smack……..smack……..smack…….._

“They get in this morning and the place is trashed cause the dumbass couldn’t figure out how to escape and tried to build a shelf ladder to get back into the vents. He’s got a broken ankle now. Dean feels awful. He tried to give that kid a shot but I guess not every lost soul deserves one.”

Castiel’s screaming has died down some at the mention of Dean. Sam notices.

“He’s just got to finish up with the cops and then he’s closing up shop. You’re in for a long day of helping your Master relax.”

There it is.

On the very next impact his cock jolts to life and the sound he makes is entirely different from his earlier suffering notes. He’s never really thought he wanted something like that, he’s still not sure he does. Master and slave holds murky, slightly unnerving connotations for Castiel, and Dean’s never expressed any interest in taking them to that point, but just hearing Sam say the word, as offhand as he likely meant it, needles something deep inside Cas, makes the numb, aching fire of his backside turn sweet. But just as he’s beginning to enjoy it, Sam stops.

With attention to his unsteady legs, he helps Cas up and positions him to stand beside the bench, facing away from the door. Producing a skein of heavy red ribbon, Sam ties the cuffs together behind Cas’ back with a large, floppy bow.

“Stay.”

It’s harder than it should be to obey. The heat from his ass throbs, accentuates the empty core of him that’s been filled nearly every single moment since he got here. Dean was right, he _needs_ something inside him at all times or it doesn’t seem right. Thank god for the cuffs as least, he can pull against them to keep from swaying too hard on his feet. The trailing ends of the ribbon brush the top curves of his buttocks, cool and taunting. Sam returns with a chair, ropes, lube and towels. Castiel would have to turn his head to see what he’s doing now and he’s not about to do that. What was Dean planning on doing? When was he coming back? Was he alright? Was-

The lock turns hard and the heavy rolling door is as close to slammed open as it can be.

“And the goddamned custom paint work that Garth had to- “ He pulls up short the moment his brain registers what he’s seeing.

His beautiful sub on trembling legs, ass a perfectly even, cherry red bloom, tied in a bow and waiting. Sam’s kicked back in a chair, hands folded over his stomach, entirely pleased with himself.

“You’ve had a rough day, Dean.”

“That’s the goddamed truth.” Dean sighs out heavy, hauls the door shut and stalks over to Cas, tearing his shirt off along the way like he can’t get rid of it fast enough. He whips Cas around and pulls him in tight, noting the tension around his eyes and the actively growing fullness of his cock. It isn’t Sam’s treatment that gets him hard like this, it’s Dean. The anger that followed him home melts away as he draws Cas into a dominating kiss, letting himself revel in the control he felt he’d lost this morning. His hands travel down and skim the fever hot expanse of his sub’s well spanked cheeks.

“Did Sammy do this to you baby?” he croons, please with the jagged hiss of breath at his touch and the way Cas arches against him, away from the sting. He plays with him a little longer, massaging the overworked skin. “He always knows just how to cheer me up.”

One finger traces the rim of Cas’ empty hole. He’s been tensing the muscle compulsively since Sam took the plug out, searching for the phantom resistance that’s no longer there to ground him. Dean knows this, it was his design all along. Which is why he screws one long finger as deeply inside Castiel as he can and holds him tight as his sub sinks against his body with exquisite gratitude.

“ _Thank_ you, Sir!” He sobs into Dean’s neck. A fist in his hair, head pulled back and mouth savaged as his Dom grinds his jean covered cock against Cas’ own. Dean consumes him, holds him fast takes the hard edge off his hunger for two long minutes, then pulls away with stormy green eyes and no hint of a smile.

“You’re going to beg for me angel. For as long as I decide. I’ll make you beg for something more,” he accentuates his point with a rough jab deeper inside Cas. “You’re going to beg me to come until your voice breaks and then I’m going to give it to you until you beg me to stop.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Cas hisses, eyes rolling back in his head. “Make me beg, use me however you need, Sir.”

“I need you on that bench right now, Cas.” He growls, unraveling the bow holding his hands behind him. “And get comfortable.”

For a lovely, quick moment, the padded leather seat he’s made to straddle is blessedly cool against his backside. He groans with the sensation and goes easily back when Dean guides him to recline against the backrest. Sam’s got his ankles bound and secured to the floor bar while Dean pulls his arms up to the padded armrests and threads more rope than seems necessary from wrist to shoulder then around the top half of chest. There’s more fit into the crease of his hips to hold them fast against the bench, and when they’re done, in far less time than Castiel would have guessed they needed for such work, he’s only able to move his head with any freedom, along with his fingers and toes.

Dean moves the chair as close to the bench as he can manage, taking in the sight of his sub helpless and aroused. The way he’s squirming his hips on the seat speaks to just how uncomfortable he is right now.

Sam hops up on the kitchen counter, snatching an apple from the bowl and breaking the silence with a sharp bite. “How’s your bottom, sweetheart?” There isn’t a hint of concern there, only the anticipation of just how much enjoyment he’ll get from Castiel’s answer.

“It burns. And sitting down…..I’m very sore.” He admits, glancing between the brothers and their twin smiles.

“I’ll just have to give you something else to focus on.” Dean picks up the bottle of lube and drizzles a long stream into his hand. “You ever been edged before Cas?” Right as he grips his sub’s cock and twists his hand up and around to slick up root to tip. Castiel mewls and arches subtly. Dean was always so efficient in the way he worked him over, every move calculated to wring each hidden pleasure out of Castiel as if it belonged to him.

“No….no- _AH_!” Dean kept pumping. An even pace, even pressure. All the time in the world.

Nowhere to go.

“But you know the concept?”

“Yes. _Oh...oh shit_ …”

“Good. See what I need right now, is a nice long afternoon of breaking you apart, piece by piece. Make you desperate beyond anything you’ve ever been before, so that when I finally push my fat cock into that perfect, tiny hole of yours you’ll come so hard it’ll feel like you’re dying. And then I’m going to empty myself in you and it’s going to feel just amazing.” He continues to milk Castiel’s erection, pausing to add more lube. “Then Sammy here will get a turn. You’ll need to come for him too, like my good boy. Then me again, you see how it goes? The game is to see who can fuck the last drop of come out of you. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

Castiel is starting to feel the fringe of his orgasm gather closer. He shifts in his seat and is reminded immediately just how little movement these ropes afford him. His Dom grins but doesn’t change a thing.

_Stroke…..stroke…..stroke….._

It would be the perfect pace for a lazy afternoon, but Castiel knows where this is going and that knowledge speeds him faster towards a release he won’t be allowed to taste.

“That’s it baby, almost there. Come ‘ere Sam.” Castiel watches the younger man jump off the counter and toss his apple core in the trash, wiping his hands off on his jeans. He towers over the bench and leans in, attentive. “I’m not gonna ask him when he’s close, cause I don’t need to. He’s got tells when he’s about to come. See that blush on his chest? That means we’re in the ballpark, but you really gotta listen to him to know when it’s coming. S’why I didn’t gag him.”

Castiel drags in a quick breath, surprised. He hadn’t known there was any real difference in the way he sounded when he was about to come, or that Dean had picked out and catalogued his reactions so neatly. The idea makes him shiver, that he could be known so well, that someone like Dean would want to. His thoughts flash to what he’d done, the choice he’d made before coming here that he was still too afraid to tell Dean, no matter how much he wanted to. It was too much, too soon. Presumptuous, though that wasn’t his intent. He hadn’t wanted Dean to get the wrong idea, he’d only wanted to clear out any distractions, to give the possibilities of this lifestyle his full devotion. It was something he’s been drawn to for so long and this was his golden opportunity.

Or no, that wasn’t the truth either. Be honest Castiel.

Dean. He’s wanted to be Dean’s from the moment he saw him. What he wanted, deep down in the slick and the darkness, in the well he’d been terrified to plunge a hand into, was this man alone. His appetites and possession, his deceptively clever mind, the casim of raw hunger that Castiel has glimpsed more often these days that he ached to help fill. Dean had spoken of owning, of belonging to him and Castiel had agreed not just because the thrust of their game required agreement. But because those words dug talons into a nerve-shrouded organ he’d only just realized was in him. The pain of so much wanting, of the doubt that the words Dean spoke might just be a script he’s read from before, with some other sub, snap at each other. What if this was just how Doms spoke? What if it didn’t mean the same for Dean as it did for him?

Because if he had never met Dean on that island? He would be home now, he was certain, with the itch for the collars and ropes fading out of his blood. Tempered, at rest.

 _Master_. He tests the word on a silent tongue. It still doesn’t feel right, but there’s something to it. He doesn’t want to be a slave, he realizes, he wants to be a servant. He wants to serve Dean with every part of his being, willing and whole. He wants everything he is to belong to this man, a cherished possession and it’s sobering how clear and unyielding that desire stands inside him now.

“You with me angel?” Dean’s noticed his mind wandering. He pinches Cas’ right nipple roughly and brings him hissing back to the present. “I need you to focus sweetheart, no trying to distract yourself into holding out.”

He doesn’t correct his Dom on the misinterpretation.

“Look at me Cas.” Dean speeds his hand, and with that look in his eye, Castiel is gone. “There Sam, you hear that?” And all three of them are immediately aware of the hitching chain of moans falling from Castiel’s self-bitten lips. He strains his body against the ropes because the dig of them feels so incredible and the edge is right there. _Just a little more…._

“Pull back for me baby.” Dean’s hand is gone but the currents of pleasure still course through him. He has to breathe, ground himself and talk himself through the next inhale. “You go too far, you won’t like the kind of orgasm you’ll get. Don’t want to ruin it Cas, not today.”

Sam hums in boyish disappointment.

“We’re just gonna draw it out nice and slow. Come on Sam, give him a try….”

| | |

This is heaven.

Afternoon sunlight warms the loft in dust speckled gold. The buzz of traffic far beyond the borders of their cocoon never ceases but never intrudes. Tucked high away in a corner of the city with no one to find them, both brothers give in to the languid spell, their voices soft jovial notes that make room for every tortured sound from Castiel, a gorgeous music of pleas and sob torn moans. Sam’s pulled a few pillows over and stretched out on the floor beside Dean’s chair, palming himself absently while he watches his brother work. It’s been nearly three hours now, they’ve both been keeping track carefully. But somehow the time expands even as it slows and Dean senses his mind do the same. Focus sharpens, elongates, he can observe every breath of Castiel’s as if it were his own and knows the path and sensation of every bead of sweat. He feels euphoric, displaced from the confines of himself and expanding out even as every base sense zeros in on Castiel. His angel has been nearly dismantled with desire under his care. Fever bright eyes rolling out of focus, skin tender to the touch and glowing with sweat. He trembles, shakes at every brush of air, at the mere word on Dean’s lips of what’s to come next. His cock strains an over-ripe purple, balls swollen and so deliciously tempting to fondle between strokes, just to watch him buck and scream. It’s a symphony laid out before him that tunes its beauty to Dean’s hand. Only two pulls at a time now, sometimes three, before he has to pull back and watch the crest rise and fall yet again, watch the same mesmerizing desperation find a new passage down his sub’s body.

“Oh god Dean I _can’t_ anymore! Pl- _mmmhhh_ ! It’s too much Fuck…. _fuck_ ,” A fat tear rolls down Castiel’s cheek, his head lolling back, defeated. Levering himself up, Dean gives in to the impulse and licks the jewel of fluid from his face.

“I say when it’s too much darlin’. Sam, care to help me show him?”

Rising on his knees, unzippered grin, Sam tilts his head, catches Castiel’s eye and holds it while he lowers his mouth over his right nipple. He doesn’t need to suck hard, Castiel jolt and cries out as if electrocuted with the first healthy pull and a suggestion of teeth. Dean mouths his way down, pausing at the other nipple only long enough for Castiel to take in the sensation of both brothers suckling at him, the variations of their skill. He’s openly crying now.

Moving lower, Dean nuzzles his way between Castiel’s legs, lavishing the peachy curves of each of his balls, so plump with the hours of denial. Sam continues on the the reddened buds with fingers and mouth and it’s not long before Cas is convulsing with another wave of release that didn’t even need a hand to his abused prick. The brothers pull back, grinning at each other. Cas is ready.

There’s no way he’ll make it to a bed, or hell even the couch. Castiel has been a broken mess of need ready to shatter for hours now and it’s Dean’s duty to fuck him at the peak of his suffering. He feels high with thought of it, of how wrecked and perfect Castiel will be when he finally takes what he’s been begging for all morning long.

“Let’s get him on the floor,” Dean’s already undoing the ropes, rubbing carefully at the angry red lines all over Castiel’s ankles and arms. Sam’s pulled over a blanket from somewhere, arranges a few pillows, then hooks Castiel under the arms while his brother gets his legs so they can haul his limp body to the makeshift nest. “Now hold him.”

Sitting at Castiel’s head, Sam gets a grip on his arms below the cuffs and pins them to the ground. Dean stands to remove his jeans, tearing open the belt and buttons. His sub is breathtaking. Splayed out like an offering, overwrought from the rampant need _he_ created, chest heaving and face wet with unstoppered tears. And now he is going to sink into the burning clutch of his boy’s body and watch him scream. Shove himself so very deep Castiel will always feel him inside. When Dean’s done with him today, there will never be any doubt that this is where his angel belonged, held captive and forced to take every devastating pleasure Dean could come up with. Forever.

“What’s your color?” he husks out, coiled. All he needs is one word.

Gaze unfocused, Castiel writhes feebly in Sam’s grip. He’s too far gone, Dean isn’t even sure he heard him. His brother chuckles ahead of him, he loves it when he’s got someone to play with who’s under this deep, the power it offers. Dean can taste it too, like ozone on the back of his throat, but a half aware sub never fully satisfies him. No, he needs them to _understand_ what’s about to happen. He needs to watch submission bleed into Castiel’s eyes.

Dropping to his haunches, Dean prowls up the line of arching flesh to grip the hair at the side of Castiel’s head, pulling at the messy locks and forcing him to meet Dean’s eye. “Cas,” he barks. “Color!”

“....green. Greengreengreen!”

“Watch me, “ One good shake from the hand in Cas’ hair. “You will watch me take what’s mine and you’re going to come when you feel me inside you. Understand?”

“Yes!” He looks almost terrified, Dean thinks, like Dean might taunt him with the prospect of release and then snatch it away. But he’d never do that to his boy, his angel. Rearing up on his knees, he takes one last pleasure in slicking up his cock as slowly as he can, biting his lip, head tossed back in bliss. He knows what he looks like right now, one more weapon in a very capable hand. Slotting himself between Castiel’s legs, he takes hold of his thighs and jerks him roughly into position. There won’t be any prep, not this time. The daily plug means Cas is always moderately ready, and the point is now for him to take this how it’s given to him and plead for more. Grinding in forceful circles, the head of Dean’s dick meets some resistance, toys with the tensed ring of muscle before the slip of lube and brute determination shoves its way inside. He’s not stopping now, not for anything, calculated press further and further until that quivering pink hole is stuffed full.

“ _Dean_!” Castiel shrieks, almost bucking Sam off him. His heels scrabble at the floor but Dean only uses his superior strength to hoist him back into place, pull out and slam back in.

Cas comes immediately. He comes in soaring jets of milky white seed that stripe his chest and the floor and Sam’s arms. He keeps coming with every powerful thrust of Dean’s hips, again and again, one long chain of released compression, of full throated cries until his voice is ragged, then gone, the only sound now of skin slapping, of Dean’s animal grunts and Sam egging him on. The only indication they have that Castiel hasn’t, in fact, blacked out are the slits of blue still watching, just as he was told. Getting a firmer hold, Dean fucks him harder than he ever has before, unsure how this ravenous, clawing hunger for Castiel bloomed so hot and so fast.

 _He needs….needs...needs_.

The silk drag against his shaft and the rapturous look of bliss on Castiel’s face becomes too much. With a sound and expression echoing pain, Dean comes hard. When he manages to pry his eyes open, Castiel is staring back at him, wrung out but happy looking. Lying side by side, intermingled sweat, Dean’s never felt so connected to anyone before, a buzzy, giddy sensation almost as if he….

“My turn.”

“Wait,” he stops his brother with a hard look. Turns a softer one on Cas. “You ok darlin’?”

“Mmmh, yes. _Greeeen_. I’m very, very green right now, Sir.” Cas sounds drunk and it makes both brothers laugh.

“Well alright then,” He sneaks a quick kiss from the sub’s slack lips. They taste of salt. He hauls Cas up a bit so he can scoot underneath, get his back fit between the vee of Dean’s legs. He’s a ragdoll, no strength but to sigh, content. It doesn’t last, of course.

Sam only needs to shove his jeans down, lube his waiting cock and untangle Castiel’s legs. He pushes right in with a deliberate corkscrew of his hips and grins like the devil when the new stretch electrifies Cas to life. He yells with the last of his gravel scuffed voice, twists, unprepared for more so soon, but there’s nothing he can do.

“You gonna come for me too, Cas?” Sam grunts between hard, even thrusts. Castiel shakes his head, unsure if he can. “I think you will. You feel how nice and deep I am?” And he makes his point by grinding his hips. Dean doesn’t need to do much to hold Castiel in place, he’s too weak, hands barely able to clutch at his thighs, but he gets a hand in Cas’ hair because it always scratches a real good itch to tighten his fingers in all those thick, dark locks. Neither brother touches Castiel’s cock, they don’t need to. Soft and sticky against his thigh, it fills out gradually under Sam’s determined assault, leaking almost as much as when they were teasing him. Dean swipes a finger through the fresh droplets gathering on his abs and pushes it into Cas’ mouth.

“You see that angel? Still got more we got to drain out of you. We want every drop. Just let it happen…”

“ _Yeah_ ,” Sam breathes and picks up the pace, face scrunching up as he loses himself in the sensations. He works the responsive nub of Castiel’s prostate without mercy, and with more of a sob than a cry, Castiel comes, less than before but enough that his stomach and chest are a sticky, pearlescent mess. Getting his arms under Cas’ hips, Sam locks on and uses the fucked out body under him hard and fast, cursing, gnashing his teeth as he comes, jutting his hips a few times for good measure just to be sure every drop stays inside.

They clean him up after that, warm washcloths and dry towels. They get Cas to the couch after draping it with blankets and Dean cradles him in his arms, forcing him to juice from a straw while Sam makes him toast with peanut butter and honey. Sweat cools, and soft words are mostly unheard through the daze Castiel falls into. Dean kisses him again and turns him over on his belly. He takes him slow, making sure every push grinds Cas’ spent dick into the couch.

Nice and slow.

It’s a while before he gets Cas to come, but that doesn’t matter, he knows it will only get harder from here but they’ve got time. He takes as long as he pleases after that, lazy circular fucks that make the leather cushions creak. Sam’s making them sandwiches, he starts with his when Dean shows no interest in hurrying. Castiel sputters pitiful noises beneath him, limp and rocking under his Dom’s gentle force. Dean licks at the sweat along Castiel’s spine and it tastes glorious. He could do this all day long, just like this. Maybe he should.

It takes more lube and some careful avoidance of Cas’ worn out prostate, but Dean manages to prolong his languorous fuck for another forty minutes. Sam’s finished his sandwich. Dirty and sweet he comes, sighs content and flips Cas onto his back once more before moving away.

Sam takes a new approach, folds himself down between Castiel’s legs and licks wide stripes against the puffy red rim of his abused hole. This gets a reaction, a wail of defeat, long and pitious with one arm thrown over his eyes with a new trail of tears leaking through. Dean brings his lunch over to watch. Cas loves being rimmed, both brothers know it. He might not have had the strength to get hard if Sam had just taken him again, but this is something his body can’t ever resist. Sloppy wet, Sam laves and sucks, enjoying the hell out of how over-sensitive Cas is. When there’s enough of an erection to work with, he moves up to take it in his mouth, rolling the spongy flesh with his tongue, pulling at it with unforgiving suction. Cas is begging to stop, a jumbled mess of words and sucking breath that all amounts to _no more_. But he’s not safewording, so Sam continues. When he finally gets Cas to come again, it’s with his tongue buried deep in his ass, one hand jacking expertly quick. One quick spurt, that dribbles down his already soft shaft. Sam raises a challenging eyebrow at his brother, the game is on the line now, with very little chance Cas has anything left. He slicks up and fucks him quick, the spoils of his victory.

After a brief rest and more forced fluids, and three separate check ins from Dean, they manhandle Cas up into Dean’s lap while Sam all but gets him in a full nelson from behind. The two of them press Cas between them so Dean can bounce him on his lap and feel the breath of every plea to stop warm against his face. He feels invincible, Cas their immobilized prey that has nothing left to give but his submission. Dean bites at him, sucks dark blooms along the cut of his collarbone and both sides of his neck. His. His to mark and to fuck. His to keep.

_Mine...mine...mine...mine._

The chant doubles back in his head and erupts when his sub goes rigid, stutters a beautiful string- _ah ah ah_ \- and gives up one final pearl, the last hard won drop Castiel’s body had to give.

Dean kisses him furiously then, though Cas can’t do much to react, praises him, pets him, holds him in his arms while Sam readies what they’ll need to care for Cas. He knows there won’t be more after this.

“Sir,” Cas blinks up at Dean, barely able to keep his eyes open. “Are you happy? Did I satisfy you?”

“Oh baby, fuck,” Dean wants to crawl into Cas’ skin, he wants to cover him with his body and protect him from the world. “You are so amazing, you made me so very happy. You’re perfect, you know that angel?” He brushes sweat soaked hair from Cas’ face and kisses him everywhere, curling around him until Sam returns with more towels. They clean Cas, wrap him in blankets, bring him food which Dean feeds him by hand. All three of them curl up on the couch and spend the rest of the day watching movies, getting take out when it’s dark and falling asleep together in an uncomfortable pile.

Dean never stops touching Cas, petting him, holding him close. Even the next morning, when he would normally be up and about before Castiel awoke, he instead lays in bed with his sub tucked in close, stroking away the aches, kissing him gentle and deep as if he needed the connection just as much as Cas.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas ya filthy animals.

They don’t use the playroom next door very often. He’d thought that they would, the first day Dean had shown it to him. He’d thought he’d spend a great deal of time in that big, black-box loft with the rolling set pieces and overhead rigging. As a stage it’s impressive, a performance space built solely for the brothers’ gratification. Sam uses it most, he didn’t appear to favor bringing people into his home. At least, Castiel’s never seen him do it. The building was far too old to allow for total soundproofing, so some days, when he’s waiting for Dean to return, a few minutes are spent in deep contemplation over what Sam might be doing in there that could possibly make a person scream like that. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know.

But it is where they teach classes, the ones Crowley puts together for his long list of high paying clientele. Sometimes they’re given very little notice, just an abrupt phone call and a few hours before the sound of foreign steps fill the hall. The brothers never refuse, Castiel notices, even if dealing with Crowley for longer than five minutes appears to aggravate the hell out of both of them.

“Does he always make demands like that? I mean, you own the floor, don’t you?” trying to remember a vague detail from they day he arrived.

“Sure do, but it’s not so black and white. Crowley technically owns the  _ building _ , including the land. He’s kind of curated this place, you could say. His King of Kink shtick is big fucking business, and a while back he worked out that business would run smoother if he could keep tabs on some of his minions. Everybody in this joint is in the lifestyle, one way or another, and connected to him.”

It’s only at that moment that Castiel realizes he’s never actually seen any of the other residents until now because he’s never once left the apartment. How long has he been here? Two weeks, three? Are there other subs like him in other corners of this building? Shut away, drugged by sex and no longer counting the days? 

“Sam and I got an invite to rent out a place years ago,” Dean continues, “Which, lemme tell you we jumped on so goddamned fast. It might not look like much from the outside, but this place is the center of the kink universe and harder to get into than the Pope’s own butthole. That was back before we were teaching, but we were Domming for Crowley’s clients almost exclusively. You make it as one of his instructors, you’re set, and we were both hell bent on climbing that ladder, but honestly,” he laughs, “I think he just looked at us as cost efficient, two Doms in one unit. Sold us this place and signed us as instructors all in one neat little two hundred and twenty-five page document that’s written in Urdu for all I understood it. I let Sammy read that thing and give me the cliff notes. We get this place below market value, and all’s we gotta do is teach a few folks the family business whenever Crowley wants.”

Aside from his exposure on the island, Castiel’s never watched them teach a regular class. And he must admit he’s more than a little curious about what they do next door and the types of people that attend. Sam happens to be holding a demonstration on flogging safety the following day and Dean’s more than happy to take him, bursting with child-like happiness at showing off his talented brother. 

It’s the first time Castiel’s worn clothing since he arrived, digging through forgotten drawers to find a plain tshirt and jeans that feel immediately at odds with his body the moment he puts them on. He can’t even begin to think about something as overwhelming as shoes at the moment but hopes no one will notice. It’s the leather cuffs though, the ones he’s grown so accustomed to they feel necessary, that broadcast his station loudly enough. Dean leads him to a seat in the back then goes to help Sam set up his gear while the attendees trickle in. Over two dozen Doms, a few of whom are trailed by subs, but these have all been clearly instructed not to interact with anyone else. The rest, however, seem to mostly know one another, and fill the time before Sam starts with catching up, crowding the space with ever bigger personalities.

Castiel watches them all, fascinated. It’s not fair, but he can’t help wondering what they’re faults are. They must have them, it’s not possible for any of them to compare to Dean. He feels his heart stutter at the very thought of his Dom, glances over again to where the brothers are organizing equipment with such familiar ease it doesn’t cut into their conversation. Castiel flexes his fists against the cuffs, grounding himself in the comfort of their stricture, a habit he’s developed recently. 

Watching Dean takes up so much of his focus, he doesn’t notice the great deal of attention he’s been getting from the crowd. Stares, whispers with the lilt of appreciation. It becomes more apparent when Dean finally joins him and the proverbial door is opened for introductions. More than a few Doms slide into view, addressing only Dean and complimenting Castiel abstractly, as if he were a particularly lovely show horse. It’s incredibly strange, and Castiel fights the urge to both laugh at the absurdity and growl that he’s sitting right here, but this is a social scene he doesn’t know all the customs of and so he keeps his mouth shut so as not to embarrass his Dom.

Dean talks with them easy enough, but there’s a formality there that Castiel takes note of, uptilted chin, clear, intimidating eyes. He’s dominating  _ them _ , Castiel realizes, and they’re readily, though graciously, cowed. If there’s a hierarchy at work, Dean’s place is at the top. 

When Sam’s class ends, Dean all but slings Castiel over his shoulder to fend off hopeful offers coming in from two separate Doms trying a different tactic. 

They laugh about it casually that evening and both miss Sam giving them an incredulous look.

Three days later, Crowley schedules a shibari workshop, couples and Doms working on new ties while Dean demonstrates on Castiel. Though Cas wears only a pair of skimpy white briefs, it isn’t a sexually charged room, not with the careful, dry manner Dean explains what he’s doing on Castiel’s body and why. But they touch him. Finger a  knot, slip under the ropes to test the give so that they can replicate it on their partner. One after another, even when Dean attempts to lead them away, show them what to do on their own model, someone else would circle Cas in concentration, tugging and handling the ropes to get a better understanding of their form. Nothing out of line, nothing disrespectful, just natural student interest in what Dean’s created. He couldn’t always see his Dom, but he could hear the gradual edge slicing into his voice. He makes a point of staying by Cas’ side for the rest of the class, subtly barring his students from getting too close. There’s still people gathering their things when Dean takes Cas’ hand and walks them both firmly out of the room, scowling black hell the whole way.

“I’m sorry sweetheart, but that was too much to handle. I’ll use one of Crowley’s subs from now on, is that ok?” He growls, expelling a weighted sigh the moment he locks the playroom door behind them.

“But I did what I was supposed to, didn’t I?” Cas asks in confusion as he watches Dean rub furiously at his neck. He doesn’t know what he’d done wrong.

“Yeah, baby, yeah you were great. I just had this stupid idea that I’d be ok with using you in class. You know, showing everyone how beautiful you look when I get you tied up, but I- I didn’t- “ Dean choked off his words and stalks across the room, opening the fridge, pulling out a beer, putting it back and turning on his heel. Castiel watches him pace before slipping off his briefs, sliding up against Dean’s front and wrapping his arms around him. “Oh angel,” He holds Castiel tight against him, nose buried in his hair. “I’m sorry if you thought I was mad at you. I just didn’t realize how sick it’d make me feel to have all those people looking at you, touching you.”

“Sam touches me.” Cas offers carefully, he can feel the way Dean trembles slightly. And the way he‘s trying to hide it. 

“Sam doesn’t want you for- I  _ trust  _ Sam. He wouldn’t- ” He shakes his head free from the brambles of his thoughts. “Listen, if you’re not comfortable with me working on another sub, I can always use Sam.”

And that….that is the most ridiculous thing Castiel has ever heard him say, funnier still because Dean is only musing yet completely serious. He has to step back and turn Castiel’s face up to his to find out why the man is suddenly shaking in his arms. The peels of laughter only follow when the mental picture of what that would look like pops unbidden into Castiel’s mind.

Students forced to watch the two of them bicker over the best approach, Sam second guessing every knot and just shrugging with a bored expression when Dean asked him who the expert was here.

The gleam in Dean’s eye when he gagged his brother in revenge.

The possible need to employ a motorized winch to slowly haul Sam off the ground like a prized marlin.

“If you use Sam, I would very much like to watch.” His laughter subsiding only enough for him to speak.

“Yeah, maybe not,” Dean picks his sub up by the hips, Castiel’s lean legs finding their place around Dean’s waist. 

They make it only as far as the sofas, tumbling down for a round of needy kisses and pawing hands. When Sam comes home, he finds Dean watching tv with Cas straddling his lap, blindfolded, hands tied behind his back and slumped against Dean’s chest. His breathing is laborious, deep, his skin glowing and head lolling to the side and back any time Dean moves. Which is how Sam knows Cas has been sitting there, perfectly still, impaled and warming Dean’s cock for a very long time.

“You guys alright?”

“Yup,” Dean doesn’t turn to greet his brother, and the clipped tone implies more than just the application of his willpower. But this isn’t the time to ask, not when there’s some kind of mood hanging in the air. He retreats up to his room and does the rough calculation on how long he has to keep his mouth shut before he can talk to his brother.

| | |

Sam has patience. It was something he had to learn, true, had to work on, it’s not his natural state to wait for anything. But Dean taught him how to string along an experience, hold back impulses until the anticipation was worth more than the end result. He taught him another kind of patience, too. The kind that weathers long silences and bitten off words, snide jokes that block any attempt at honest communication. Sam could navigate that, he had a lot of practice and some very detailed Dean-shaped maps.

There’s no great mystery here, not for Sam. It didn’t surprise him in the least that Dean’s little experiment with using Castiel as his shibari model backfired. The two of them may have locked themselves away like fugitives, but Sam hasn’t and their building community is a small one and way too plugged into each other’s lives. Everyone knew about the shy, green as grass sub the infamous Dean Winchester had holed up in his loft. It’s the number one favorite topic of conversation in the elevators and hallways, and their lobby security man Vince is openly accepting bribes from the more aggressively curious for information. And Dean really isn’t helping matters with the way he’s been acting, shutting down anyone who so much as alludes to Cas with extreme prejudice. 

Sam watches them. The two completely oblivious idiots so balls deep in each other they barely know what day it is. Dean’s been torturing Cas more. Not in the way Sam would, not with pain or hard denial, not with a cool, curated detachment and the strict ration of approval. But then, Cas isn’t the type of sub he’s generally interested in. Attracted to, yes, Castiel is beautiful and he’s enjoyed taking him with Dean’s approval. His innocence is a novelty, but one he’s more inclined to sample occasionally. The sharp edge he looks for in his subs isn’t there, and under Dean’s mastery, it’s not ever likely to develop.

No, Dean’s approach is the inverse of every one of Sam’s proclivities. He tortures with  _ pleasure _ , too much of it, for too long. He draws Cas in with hunger and praise and still, as far as Sam can tell, has not punished Castiel once for anything. Dean overwhelms him, head on, an undertow that drags Castiel away from the surface with ceaseless ecstasy and holds him there long after with hours of focused care only to start all over again with the sunrise. Dean’s figured out how to push Castiel into subspace easily now, so easily. More often these days, that’s how Sam finds him, glassy eyed, pink mouth wet and slack. Denial is infrequent, and, Sam’s quick to deduce, used very specifically to create dependence. 

And he’s almost 100% sure Dean has no conscious knowledge of how he’s training Cas.

He comes home from the shop one evening later than usual. He knows Dean’s scheduled to teach and doesn’t think much of it when he’s greeted with empty silence. Tossing his things aside, Sam washes his hands and starts in on dinner, deciding to make something that will keep for whenever Dean and Cas get back. He’s just sauteing the onion when he hears a shuffle, followed by an oddly heavy jangle coming from upstairs.

“Dean?” Castiel’s sleepy voice carries across the loft from above. 

“Nope, it’s me. You hungry? Come on in here and you can help me set the table.”

Another jangle, and bare feet shifting back and forth.

“I- I can’t.”

For a moment, Sam’s stomach plummets at the thought that Dean might have tied up Cas and left him alone while he taught class. He’d never think his brother would do anything so dangerously stupid, but things had been getting a little intense between those two and right now he wouldn’t put it past them. Turning off the stove and shoving the pan aside, Sam barrels across the living room and takes the steps three at a time.

“Whaaaaaat the shit is this?” 

“I was taking a nap.” Cas states innocently enough, and Sam groans because he’s living with two people now that frequently make him want to bang his head against the nearest wall.

“No, Cas. What the hell are you wearing?”

“Dean gave it to me.”

That’s obvious enough, the question is, when exactly had his brother’s tastes changed?

Standing amid the pillows and a scattering of books, Cas stares back at Sam with curious eyes, the smile fading as he picked up on the anxiety clouding the man’s features. The collar wasn’t something Sam had made, which only hurt a little when he thought about it a second time. The leather wasn’t as supple and the stitching crude by his standards, but it was roughly the same color as the cuffs and dressed up some by slim plates of gold metal filigree. From the collar ring hung a chain of dull silver links much heavier than what one might normally use for this sort of purpose. Sam sighed and rubbed at his eyes.

“He stole that from the shop, didn’t he?”

“I- “ Cas looked down and scooped up a handful of chain thoughtfully. “Maybe? I’m not sure. He won’t get in trouble will he?”

“No Cas, he owns the shop sooo…..but, what about this whole…” He points in a circle at Castiel’s crotch. “Situation?”

“He put me in chastity.” 

It would be one thing if he’d come upon Castiel in a trim little cock cage, just like all the other subs on the block where wearing, but no. He can almost  _ hear  _ the ghost of his brother’s thought process.  _ Cas needs something special.  _

A full belt, three inches wide at least and plated in matching gold slung low on his hips. A stiff tan triangle of leather, also plated gold, cupped the sub’s genitals neatly, tapering to a thick band that rode between his cheeks. A padlock, big as a fist, hung from one side, swaying.

“That’s not regular chastity, it’s medieval.” 

“Actually, that’s a misconception. The knights of the Crusades did not in fact-”

“Cas, hold up. Did he  _ leave  _ you here like this? What if something happened?”

“Oh, I can take this off,” he turned to show the simple buckle at the back of his neck, then kicked a pillow aside to reveal the easily detached clip anchored in a flush mounted ring in the floor.

“Well that’s new,” Sam sighed. 

“He installed it this morning. I believe he said ‘Sam’s gonna bitch but he’ll love it.’”

“And you’re ok with this?”

“Of course,” Cas smiled through the confused knit of his brow. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

| | |

“We gotta talk.”

“I gotta get Cas first.” Dean didn’t so much as look at his brother when he came in, breezing past at a swift clip. In two long strides, Sam veered around his brother, blocking his access to the stairs. 

“That’s what we need to talk about. Ten minutes. He’s fine I just checked on him.”

Dean glared at his brother and shot a hard look upstairs, aggravated that Sam wanted to do this now, but he knew whatever headache Sam was about to cause would only grow if he brushed him off now. He huffed, annoyed, but Sam took it for the concession it was and pulled his brother by the arm to the other side of the loft.

“Look, I’m not trying to shut you down or anything, but we’re supposed to watch each other’s backs and right now I gotta tell you that I’m a little worried about you and Cas.”

Dean laughed, “What, is this about the chain thing? Look, we did something like that back on the island and we both wanted to try it again. No big deal, Cas is totally into it.”

“And the chastity? You have him trussed up like boy Slave Leia up there while you’re out teaching. It kind of- “

“Oh shit I didn’t even think of that!” Dean’s eyes expanded with glee. “He  _ does  _ look like boy Leia! Damn that’s hot. And that makes me Solo, so-”

“Well technically that makes you Jabba the Hutt- damnit that’s not what I’m talking about!” Shaking his brother’s arm to clear the distraction. “Do you realize he’s been here for a month?”

“Yeah, so? What, you don’t want Cas here anymore?” The danger in his voice immediate and real.

“No. No that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying, he hasn’t been out of this  _ apartment  _ in a month. Do you even realize that?”

“He’s been to the playroom.” Dean argues, legitimately confused over the issue.

“Really Dean? Ok, he hasn’t left this building. What’s the plan here? He hasn’t said anything about when he has to leave, and I know you haven’t brought it up. Do you guys know what you’re doing? He’s got a job in another state, and you can’t take any more time away from the shop. I’m not saying you should end this, but I really think you need to start considering how you two are going to work things when he has to go back.”

“Look, I told Cas that he’s welcome to stay here for as long as he wants, and I’m sticking to it. If he needs to go, he can tell me himself and we’ll figure it out. But I don’t want to send him the wrong kind of signals by bringing it up.” 

“And what kind of signals do you think you’re sending chaining him to the floor every time you’re gone? Or locking him in that….thing. Since when have you been into chastity? And where did you even get it?”

“....”

“Nope! No, I don’t even want to know. What I’m saying is, you are the Dom here, and Cas is relying on you to know how this is supposed to work so he’s going to follow your lead. That’s basically how you’ve been training him to respond since he got here, so what makes you think he’s going to suddenly try to take the reins on this? Because you barely let him up for air as it is.”

“I just want him to feel good, Sam. I don’t want him to regret being here.” Dean murmurs.

“I know,” Sam lows gently. “But you need to think of yourself, too. He isn’t just a regular sub for you, I get that. But I think you don’t know where you stand with Cas right now. And I think it’s making you a little nuts.”

The beat of silence that followed could mean anything. When Dean patted his brother on the arm with a flat,  _ yeah sure _ , and walked away, Sam grabbed his coat and left.

| | |

The next few days go by like the the ones before, only this time they seemed sharper, unavoidably in focus. There was a place in his life now, where Cas had burrowed in deep, and Dean hadn’t noticed it until he started to look. Sam’s words rattled around, dragged after him over the floor and swarmed his ankles every time he came home to find Cas lounging like a cat or typing furiously on the laptop Dean had loaned him, chipping away at some new idea for a book. Sam had stopped sceneing with them, spent more time out of the apartment, but his words stayed behind to nip and whisper at Dean until he was pissed off at a nagging brother that wasn’t even there. 

Cas was leaving. Cas would leave. Eventually, soon, some day. It didn’t matter what the parameters were, they were back at that same stupid roadblock and he didn’t know a way around it. 

He wanted Cas. He wanted the man so goddamned much some days it felt like he was starving, like his biology had tapped a nourishment so pure it hurt. The feel of him under his hands, the look on his face when Dean finally pushed inside him, the raw scrape of his voice when he begged. How was he supposed to let that go? 

But he had to. No matter how much Dean wanted to keep him here, reality just wouldn’t let them. If only it were as simple as other couples. He wasn’t just asking Cas to move in with him, be his boyfriend, the full Hallmark routine. He’d be asking Cas to give up normalcy, leave all the trappings of his old life behind and give himself over to Dean as his full time sub. Because that’s what Dean wanted, he realized, the only way he could hush the grating, needling dread that followed him constantly these days. His angel, tied to him day and night, those blue eyes waiting for him, ready…..

It was such a beautiful dream. The dream of a clingy, selfish bastard and fuck did Dean ever hate himself for it. 

| | |

Castiel’s so engrossed in his work, he doesn’t register the sound of the keypad. He’d been sitting at the dining table all afternoon, pouring out almost a full chapter that he was confident would need very little editing. Writing had become easier lately. At first it was just something to pass the hours while Dean was at work so he could still feel productive, but he’d hit on an idea one day and since then the thing had practically written itself. It was probably total trash, but that’s not what mattered. Castiel’s head was clear, he had long hours in a row all to himself and none of the real world distractions that had always made writing so difficult before. He was going to finish something for the first time in years, and more exciting than that, he felt sure he was going to like what it became.

The door slid open, boots at his back. He turned and caught the fringe of a look on Dean’s face that dissolved into something less distressed. 

“Dean! How was work? Are you-  _ mmhh! _ ”

Dean yanked him into a hard kiss, diving in immediately with a long, probing tongue, sucking at Castiel’s lips and stripping his lungs of air.

“In the bedroom,” he growls, panting just as hard as Castiel. “On the bed, back against the headboard.”

He doesn’t wait, and Castiel watches a moment, confused by the abrupt way Dean pivots on his heel and walks away. In the bedroom, Castiel crawls up the bed and positions himself propped against the headboard, hands at his sides and long legs stretched out in front of him. He watches the door, twisting the sheets in his fingers and gripping the plug inside him in anticipation. Moments later Dean strides through the door, halts a moment at the sight of Castiel who licks his lips involuntarily at the sight of the coils of rope piled in his hands. 

“Arms out.” 

The minute Castiel lifts his arms to the sides, Dean gets to work winding rope around and around, securing both limbs to the top bar of the headboard. He’s drawn it tighter than Castiel is used to, but it’s not painful and it’s does an excellent job of holding Castiel in place. He can’t so much as lift his chest and inch. 

“Spread your legs.” And the tone of his voice leaves no room for argument. Cas does so quickly, displaying the end of the plug nestled between his thighs. That usually moves Dean to action, but he only stands there, staring at Cas with a strange look on his face, the typical, joy-laced desire replaced by something strained. Biting his lip, Castiel’s about to say something when Dean snaps out of it, tears at his clothes until he’s naked and slinks up the bed. He makes quick work of lubing up his cock then carefully removing the plug and tossing it aside. Shoving between Castiel’s thighs, he hitches his hips into place and spears him immediately in one rough push that makes Castiel wail and knock his head back against the wall.

“There we go angel,” he has one arm wrapped around Castiel’s hips and the other gripping the headboard as he flexes and bows, fucking in as deep as he can go. “This is what you were made for, you know that? Christ you’re so fucking perfect, and you’re mine, aren’t you?”

“Oh god Sir! I’m yours, take  _ anything _ ! I belong to you-  _ ah ahhh! _ ”

“That right?” His thrusts get faster, and the force begins to pull Castiel’s arms sharply against the ropes. They tingle down to his fingers. “What if I took your freedom, sweetheart? What if I chained you for real and never let you go. You would only exist to serve me and I would  _ worship  _ you Cas.”

“Sir, shit, I’m going to come!” His eyes roll back and Dean snarls, snapping his hips like an animal. The ropes start to chafe painfully, and Castiel realizes that they’re too tight for this kind of scene. He can’t feel the tips of his fingers. “Wait, Dean, you have to loosen the ropes.” 

Dean’s head is bowed, Castiel can’t see his face, but the muscles of his back are shaking, and not from exertion. “Dean,” Castiel nudges him with his knee and his Dom finally looks up….

His expression looks broken, twisted, and it shoots real fear through Castiel for the first time.

“Red! Dean, red!”

Gasping like he’s just come up for air, Dean reels back, eyes wide. He looks across Cas’ arms, at the purpling color and the worried look in his sub’s eyes. Scrambling, he unravels the knots and frees Castiel as fast as he can. There are the beginnings of raw, red lines winding from wrist to shoulder and the color of his fingers isn’t a dangerous shade of purple, but it cuts right through Dean’s heart all the same.

“Oh Jesus Christ Cas I’m sorry!” Dean’s still gulping air, reaching to sooth Castiel then pulling himself back with a whimper.

“Dean I’m fine,” He scoot in closer, flexing his fingers. They buzz with the return of blood but they’re rapidly getting their color back. “See? It was just a little tight but it’s fine now.”

“It’s not fine, Cas. It’s  _ not fine _ . What do you need? What can I do? I’m sorry...I’m sorry….”

“Dean, look at me. You don’t need to do anything except tell me what’s wrong.” He runs his hand over Dean’s back and tries to cup his cheek. Dean pulls back, stumbling a bit as he tries to create space.

“Don’t do that.  _ I’m _ the Dom here, you understand that? It’s my job to take care of you and I fucked up!”

Castiel stands, “This isn’t all on you.” He tries to reason. “Mistakes happen and this wasn’t a big one. You didn’t take it too far, and now we know for next time.”

Dean’s backing up with every step Cas takes forward. “Didn’t take it too far?! You had to safeword Cas! I wasn’t in the right headspace and I tied you up so tight you had to  _ safeword _ .”

He wheels around and flees the room, and Castiel stand dumbstruck for the longest minute of his life. Shaking out of it, he looks around, pulling on the shirt and jeans Dean had discarded on the floor before stalking out. Dean’s slumped on the sofa, still naked, his head in his hands.

“I safeworded for  _ you _ !” Castiel shouts, louder than he intended, but his nerves are running haywire.

“What?” And Dean’s eyes look bloodshot when he raises his head, but they’re dry.

“I safeworded for  _ you _ , not because of the ropes. They were a little tight, yes, but we could have just loosened them a bit and kept going.  _ You didn’t hurt me! _ But you  _ are  _ hurt Dean, something was wrong and you weren’t going to stop yourself so I did!”

Dean just sits there, staring at Castiel with a war going on behind his eyes. The silence stretches out in agony.

“Dean what’s wrong? Please just tell me what you need.”

The silence persists, and Dean looks up and down at his clothes on Castiel’s body.

“I- “ he croaks, then tries again. “I don’t think this is working. You need someone stable Cas, someone who’s going to put your needs first. Maybe we should just call it and you can head home.”

And Castiel feels like he’s just been slapped. His head spins and everything draws in tight like he’s about to be sick.

“Dean, no. Just talk to me, we- “

“Cas, “ He finally stands, raising to his full height with a determined look and clenched fists. “I’m the Dom here. I’m your Dom and I’m telling you to leave. Trust me, it’s the best thing I can do for you.”

Castiel feels as though his heart is physically breaking. Dean needs him. Dean is in pain and he’s trying to send him away. He takes a steadying breath and knows what he has to do.

“You’re not in charge anymore.” Cas almost can’t get the words out, but he moves fast, rushing up the stairs while Dean spins, mouth open in surprise. In a flash, he’s in Sam’s room, slamming the door and locking it tight.

Dean stares at the loft in horror.

“CAS!” He screams from below, lost. “CAAAAAAASSS!!”


	5. Chapter 5

Sam rounds the corner and discovers where the banging noise is coming from. 

“Dean?”

Slouched on the floor, barely able to hold himself upright, his brother sits in the hallway  just outside their open front door, knocking his head against the wall at regular intervals, both hands fisting his hair. 

“He won’t come out.”

_ Thud….thud...thud…. _

Sam sighs hard and long, watching the endless night that’s ahead of him unfold past the horizon point.

“Why don’t you come inside and you can tell me what’s going on,” Nudging his brother’s bare foot with the toe of his boot, careful to keep his tone on the lighter side of neutral. When that gets no response, Sam swallows back a sound of frustration behind tight pressed lips and heads inside. Scanning back and forth, he sees the door to Dean’s bedroom open, the living room empty and silent. 

“Cas?” He calls, confused. “Hey, where is he?” 

He only makes it halfway around before Dean is there, shoving into him with a fist in his shirt, mouth a tangled snarl but eyes painfully raw.

“Don’t you touch him, you got me?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” But the answer is clear enough when he tracks Dean’s tortured gaze up the line of the wall to the upper loft.

To his closed bedroom door in the upper loft.

“Oh.”

| | |

He has a key to his bedroom, which judging from the way Castiel jumps to his feet, was not expected.

“I’m sorry,” he states in a way that is clear his is no such thing. “I just didn’t know what else to do.”

The pull of his brother’s stare at the back of his skull holds Sam at the threshold for one moment more, but he doesn’t turn around. He closes the door and turns the lock as quietly as he can behind him.

“You want to tell me what happened?”

“I don’t know!” Castiel bites out, tugging the hem of his shirt like punctuation. “He was in distress, so I stopped our scene and he freaked out. He tried to  _ send me away _ Sam, and he wouldn’t even tell me why!”

“He didn’t tell you  _ anything _ ?” Which wasn’t entirely surprising except that this was Cas and so far Dean had broken quite a few of his own personal boundaries for the man, even if Castiel didn’t know it.

“He may have tied the ropes a little tight, but giving me some bullshit excuse that doing so makes him an unstable Dom for me doesn’t make sense. We’ve adjusted things before, we’ve tried things that didn’t work and moved on! I just don’t understand why he’s acting like this now.”

“I’m not sure locking yourself in here’s going to make him much better.” He hummed and relinquished a glance at the door, the specter of his brother, pacing in anger, almost visible.

“I’m not leaving him, not now. But he wasn’t going to listen, he kept going on how  _ he’s _ the Dom, so I just thought maybe he needed a break from that. Just for a little while, just until he talks to me. It’s almost like…..” Castiel drifts to the other side of the room, his head lowering and shaking as if embarrassed of his own thoughts.

“What?” 

When he turns, the look he gives Sam is so earnest yet determined, the set of his jaw with its light tint of stubble, the lines of his brow and the coil of his shoulders all sketch an immediately masculine figure that could easily be taken as a Dom without a second glance. It mixes strangely with the ageless purity of his eyes, turned on Sam now like they never have been before and for a second he  _ gets it.  _ His brother’s bottomless fascination with this man.

“Can...can Doms drop? Like subs do?”

In the history of his adult life up to this point, Sam would have told anyone else asking that question ‘Yeah, I mean, sure. But not  _ Dean _ , are you kidding me?’ But now….it was a fragment of a thought magnetized, finding Castiel’s own and clinging to it.

“Yes. But it’s not always like subdrop, it might not look the same.”

“What does it look like?”

“Well,” Sam gives in and drops into the tall, velvet upholstered chair. Castiel, likely without thinking on it too much, folds to the floor in answer, propped against the bed. “It varies, and it’s not as common, but it’s kind of the same concept. There’s a lot of endorphins, a lot of adrenaline when we scene and when that stops, it can drain you, bring you down physically like any strenuous activity would. But it can be emotional, too. Sometimes we feel things and they can get amplified afterwards, and most of the time it’s good but if there’s anxiety, fear, guilt…..I guess when things get intense it can all come crashing in on you.”

“Do you think that’s what’s happened? What can I do?”

“For a normal person? I’d say talk to them, find out what triggered it and let them know you’re there to help them through. But I know what you’re in for with Dean. He  _ does not _ talk about his feelings, Cas. Which I suspect is a key reason you felt you had to cloister yourself up in my room in the first place.”

“I know it’s an imposition, and if you want me to go, I will. I don’t want to thrust you into the middle of our problems. Mostly I just thought it would give us both a minute to cool down, collect our thoughts.”

Sam snorted and stretched out in his chair, eyes on the ceiling. “He has not cooled down, that’s for sure.” He let the thought hang in the air and pictured all the ways Dean was trying not to punch the walls downstairs. “Maybe this will work, who knows. Maybe you can force his hand. And there’s never been a time we weren’t in the thick of each other’s problems anyway, so-” He shrugs.

“So I can stay here? Until he’s willing to talk to me?”

“Yeah. Under a few conditions.”

| | |

One night. Twenty-four hours tops. That’s what Sam put his money on before either Dean or Cas broke. He was sure his brother wouldn’t last the night with all the cursing and pacing and rushing up the stairs to plead through the door only to stomp back down. He was sure Dean would crack by dawn and spill his guts all over Castiel’s lap, finally tell him how he felt. But that didn’t happen, and in the morning Sam opened the door to find his brother propped against the opposite wall, arms crossed, chin tucked to his chest, asleep. He’s not sure if Castiel saw him there, a glimpse before he shut the door and heard it lock. Dean jolts awake at the sound, expression glassy-flat from lack of sleep. He looks at Sam, then the door.

He watches it still as Sam steps over him to go downstairs.

Cas, he was sure, wouldn’t put up with this shit for long. When the pleas to come out run dry, Dean switched hard to demands that Castiel leave. He packed all of Cas’ things and dropped the bag heavy as he could outside the bedroom door. But Castiel didn’t budge, didn’t say a word and stopped moving around so much when he realized the sounds would trigger Dean in a new wave of frustrated shouting. 

Day three they have a system. Sam uses his bathroom first while Castiel stays in bed, staring at the ceiling. One of his conditions is that Castiel must sleep in the bed with him. He would never let someone sleep on the floor, as Castiel had offered, unless it was integral to a scene of his devising. Keeping Castiel close at night, pulling him into his arms when he sensed the man needed it, was also a way of making sure Castiel didn’t drop as well. It was a risk Sam wanted to avoid though he was starting to suspect Castiel had a an untapped vein of iron running through him that would hold him steady better than any comfort he might provide. 

After that he makes breakfast, leaving one portion out for Dean, the half-feral shade sure to be haunting some corner of their loft. He makes sandwiches, too, gathers bottles of water and snacks and makes sure Castiel is stocked for the day. He’s given him his laptop, a cell and access to more books than he can read in a year. 

The second rule is that he must call Sam ‘Sir’, like every other sub inhabiting his space, an easy enough request for Castiel to fulfill. Getting him to remove the cuffs proved much harder.

“Those are  _ his  _ cuffs, Cas and it means something that you wear them. If you’re really trying to tell him that he’s not your Dom at the moment, they need to come off.”

It’s true, but he’s not going to discount the way it galls Dean to watch Cas bid him farewell each morning with a  _ Goodbye, Sir _ and naked wrists.

He heads to work and usually gets a good two hours in before Dean shows up, late. Bobby’s got no cause to complain much, though, since lately Dean’s been working three times as hard. He drags his tool cabinet over, strips to his undershirt and lays into his tasks with a determination close to mania. Everyone avoids him, but on the bright side the garage has never been so productive.

| | |

Nine days, it’s been nine fucking days and Castiel is still holed up in Sam’s room like damsel in a tower. Only this damsel is a stubborn goddamned sonovabitch who won’t listen to reason and refuses to budge. Dean hit the end of the wrench with a hammer, but the cap remained fused in place. 

He hit it harder.

Fucking Sam’s in on it, too, for every goddamned inch. Fuck him, the traitorous bastard. He nails the wrench again with a bell clap ring and the wrench knocks loose and falls down into a crevice of the engine block.

“ _ Fuck _ .”

People don’t know how to take care of their goddamned things properly and then he’s supposed to fix it all up good as new so they can take their sweet time fucking it to ruin all over again. And doesn’t Cas know he’s just trying to take care of him? He knows he doesn’t really own the man or anything, but for a while there he had his trust, Castiel belonged to him and the only thing he wanted was to keep him safe and he’s  _ just not safe _ with Dean. Can’t he see that? Isn’t this whole clusterfuck they’ve made for themselves exhibit goddamned A on why Dean isn’t able to--

“SHIT!”

He snatches his hand out of the engine and the blood runs freely down his arm. He got the wrench back but something bit him for the trouble and now he can see past the layer of skin into the pulpy gloss inside, the cut running from the base of his pinky to his wrist on the blade on his hand. 

“Garth!”

Garth gives him a clean rag and a ride to the emergency room. There’s a stack of files on every man in the shop that the triage nurses keep in a separate box under the intake desk, easy to pull.

“Morning Annie,” 

“Dean! I haven’t seen you in ages, was starting to think you’d figured out a safer way to flirt with my girls.”

“Not a chance, was savin’ myself for you.” He grinned, but it felt brittle. Annie was too busy rolling her eyes to notice. “Just need some stitches, nothing reattached.”

They both look over at Garth who flips Dean off with a heavily scarred finger. “Still works, see?”

“What’d you cut it on?” His file already open in front of her.

“A ‘71 Cuda.”

“More shots for you then.”

| | |

“You know what, just drop me off at home.” 

Garth looks at him like he just confessed a deep appreciation for hand-tatted lace.

“You came back to work on crutches last time.” Dean stares out the window. “Oookay, but Bobby’s gonna laugh his ass off.”

“Look, that car’s rusted solid and I don’t want to open it up again over that piece of shit. ‘Sides I got something at home I think I gotta do anyways.”

Garth hums and shrugs  _ your funeral _ , turns toward the apartment at the next light.

He’s aware of what it means that he goes in through the playroom door, pulling it closed behind him as quietly as he can. Maybe he was expecting to catch Cas in the living room, or sneaking food from the kitchen while they were at work. But the place is utterly silent, and Dean wonders for a moment if he finally left. He settles himself into the possibility of that silence, feeling it out, and doesn’t even register the fact that he’d stopped breathing until he heaves a lungful of air, quietly as he can. He peeks into his room and sees the bag of Castiel’s things right where Sam had left it after he’d complained it was blocking his door. Dean scrubs his face at the relief and anger that surge against one another. He sits on the bed and takes off his boots then waits for the green piece of resolve he’d felt in the car return to him and tell him what to do.

When he pads across the floor, tiptoes up the stairs and settles against the wall at the top step, he’s not trying to catch Castiel off guard, surprise him. He just wants to hear him: typing, moving, grumbling to himself like he sometimes does. Anything.

It’s maybe fifteen minutes before he does, a rustle of pages and bare feet shushing on the wood floors. He didn’t expect the door to open, almost as much as he can tell Cas wasn’t expecting to see him sitting there.

“Oh!” He leans against the frame for support, the book he’d been holding draw in against his chest.

Somewhere along the way they’d formed an unspoken pact. Dean never set foot in Sam’s room. He  _ could _ , it was his apartment after all and the rules regarding subs in his brother’s space didn’t preclude him from entering whenever he chose. But Castiel had done this as a last resort, as a refuge from what Dean was asking him to do, and ignoring that would be a violation in Dean’s estimation. 

And as long as Dean was around, Castiel never left. To step over the boundary in the other man’s presence would mean giving in, forfeiting his stance and returning home, and so far Castiel had been utterly implacable in his refusal to leave Dean. 

“I didn’t know you were home.”

Dean hummed in vague agreement, turning over his hand to inspect the bandage. Sometimes it was hard to hold Castiel’s gaze. “Day cut short…….and I wanted to see how you were doing.”

“What happened?!”

“‘S nothing, just some stitches. Happens more’n you might think, and hey, now I’ll get another cool scar to help boost my rugged manliness.”

He makes Cas smile with that. A shy one, embarrassed at its own existence, but there all the same. The two of them hover in a suspended kind of quiet for a time, glad of each other’s company but unsettled by it.

“I was going to get a new book. I finished this one.” Castiel stumbles through the words, breaking the mood. Dean rises, moves closer, stopping halfway.

“Maybe...what are you looking for, I can get it for you.” He murmurs.

Castiel watches him closely. “Sam said he had a copy of  _ The Master and Margarita _ , I believe there’s a cat on the cover.

Dean knows the book but he doesn’t say it, turns to the bookcases and traces a finger over the many spines until he finds it.

“Here you go.” He can’t help staring into Castiel’s eyes, the cut of blue hurting just as much now as it always did. The book remains afloat, half breaching the threshold and waiting for Castiel to accept. 

“Thank you,” He closes his fingers around it but doesn’t pull, and Dean doesn’t let go.

| | |

The rest of the afternoon they spend stretched out on their respective sides of the doorway, Castiel reading to Dean in his soothing, rumble edged voice. When Sam gets home, Dean jumps up, guilty looking, and hurries downstairs with the excuse of making dinner. But the next day he goes into the shop before sun up, powers through as much as he can before heading back to the apartment on his lunch break. He makes quesadillas and a pitcher of lemonade and knocks on Sam’s door with his elbow, food in hand. 

“I thought maybe we could read some more?” He asks hopefully. Castiel just stands there for a long minute, taking him in, and Dean’s about ready to prep himself for feeling like a total jackass when he spins back into the room, scoops up the book and is already looking for their place as he walks back to the door. Dean sits gratefully, curses when he realizes there’s no cups.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he teases with a cocked brow before running down to get them. Castiel’s settled himself in and is already picking apart his chosen slice when he returns.

“These are good, thank you.” 

He feels just as awkward as Dean does, it’s obvious. They’re still both unsure how to talk about this situation, but being here feels like something. Maybe not much of something, but Dean doesn’t want to shatter their peace, fragile as it is.

Castiel has a Russian grandmother. Dean learns this when he compliments Castiel on his pronunciation of yet another jigsaw name. They talk about family. The book is forgotten.

“You speak any Russian?”

Castiel head shakes at the end of a self-depreciative smile, “She wanted us to  be as American as possible, so she never tried to teach us. But you pick up things as a kid. I can say ‘You’re too skinny’, and ‘Don’t tell your mother’, and ‘That Blanche Devereaux, such a whore’.” He recited these with a spot on accent.

“Well those are some of the most useful phrases in the English language.” Dean agreed with mock approval. “What about other family, you got people back in- in North Carolina?”

“.....no. My mother’s in Vermont now, and my father was never in the picture. I don’t have any siblings but I do have cousins. A lot of cousins. I’d tell you how many but I don’t want to alarm you.”

“Well now I just need to know.”

“Uhhmmm, last count I believe it was at forty-one? But if it allays your fears, none of us speak to each other. They’re all pretty well spread out across the country.”

“Hell,” Dean tried to imagine it, genuinely baffled by the thought of so many people connected by blood and none of them close. All he had was Sam and he couldn’t even imagine him living in another borough.

“How’s your hand?”

“Hmm?” Lost in thought, Dean looked at the wrong hand for a moment before coming back to himself. “Oh, yeah, it’s good. Gotta shower with a plastic bag over it, which is a pain, but it doesn’t hurt too much. You don’t need to worry ‘bout me though, comes with the job. One time Sammy sewed right through his- “

“I do!”

“What?”

“I  _ do  _ worry about you. I’m worried now. Something’s bothering you and I don’t understand why you won’t talk to me.”

Dean grunts his way to his feet and Castiel jumps up in reply. “Cas, you’re new to this, you don’t have any idea how fast things can go south if a Dom doesn’t have control of themselves. I’m just trying to look out for you.”

“Oh my God you patronizing  _ asshole _ !” Castiel’s fury knocks Dean’s shoulders back a notch. “You think I fell into this by accident? That I- what- ended up on the wrong plane three months ago and have just been too polite to mention it? I know what I signed up for and I  _ know  _ how this is supposed to work. You don’t get to do this alone!  _ You’re dropping- _ ”

“The fuck I am!” Whip-snap sharp, body tense.

“Sam thinks so, too. And giving me some bullshit line and booting me out the door is only going to make it worse!”

“Don’t you lecture me on the lifestyle! You troll the internet, you talk to  _ Sam  _ and suddenly you’re an expert? What the fuck do you actually know about anything, Cas?!”

“I know communication means more than just asking me how I like to get off! This isn’t just about sex, Dean and you know it!”

“You want communication?” Dean snarls, kicking the empty platter on the floor between them so it sails between the bannister and lands on the floor below with an echoing shatter. “I’m doing you a goddamned favor! Pack your things and get out of my house, fucking  _ run  _ Cas. Because one day you’re gonna wake up and realize what a shit Dom I am and I’d rather you figure that out before you got hurt!”

“You want me out? Then tell me what’s wrong and I’ll decide if it’s worth the risk, but until then I’m not leaving you.”

“If you had an  _ ounce  _ of self-preservation you’d-- I should drag you out by your ankles!” Dean clenches his hands futily, itching to make good on his threat.

“I’d like to see you try,” Castiel scowls, eyes black, lips thinned and teeth bared. 

“Whoa! Whoa! Guys I can hear you  _ down the hall _ !”

Sam gallops up the stairs, long arms batting the air between them to get them to quiet down.

“Sam,” he rounds on his brother, “Tell him to leave!”

“Now wait, we’ve talked about this. You’re don’t get to make demands of me or my guests and Cas is my guest. Let’s just try to talk about-”

“Fuck talking! He’s not going to listen to reason!” Dean shouts at the ceiling, hands seized in futile claws.

“How can I listen when you won’t say a single worthwhile thing to me?!”

Dean bites down on his rage, swings the honed edge of his glare between Sam and Cas until he feels like he’s going to scream at the stone-set determination of Castiel on his right and the bottomless, saccharin  _ understanding  _ of Sam on his left.

He makes sure they hear every one of his steps as he makes his way out the door and down the hall.

| | |

Sam doesn’t have a plan. It’s more of an outline of an idea that has very good odds of blowing up in his face. But he just can’t live like this anymore.

Dean’s gone back to the prowling again, slinking around the dark corners of the loft, but this time he’s usually drunk. Sam’s found him passed out across his threshold with a bottle in his hand for the last three mornings, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop. He doesn’t want to teach, but when he does it’s with such laser focused skill for the work he’s doing that Sam wonders what he’s trying to prove and to whom. He’s still working in the shop like a man possessed, but his aura is so dark that it’s sucking the whole atmosphere of the place down with him. And shit, Dean better never find out he just spent quantifiable time thinking about his  _ aura _ .

“Alright Cas,” he starts in the moment he gets home and up to his room. “No more clothes.”

“What?” 

“Take them off, you’re not wearing them in here anymore.” He hadn’t cared that Castiel’d chosen to spend his days in the tshirts and jeans Sam had pilfered from his stash in Dean’s room, but it was time to change course. Castiel had looked at him in confusion until Sam opened the door to his bedroom and left it like that while he went about his business. He didn’t need to say anything after that, Cas was a sharp one and totally game. He stripped out of his clothes and dropped to his knees, remaining on the floor with his head bowed in one way or another until Sam brought him dinner. 

Dean saw. Sam knew he couldn’t resist an open door like that. 

The collar came next, a new one he made just for Cas in an over pigmented marine blue that he knew would look incredible on him and fuck with Dean’s mind straight through his eye socket. 

“Take it off him.” Dean snarled after two slammed doors and a kicked over chair.

“Why?”

“You fucking know why Sammy!”

“I do, but he doesn’t. Why don’t you tell him?”

The vibrating plug came next. It was a good thing the remote only had a range about the size of the loft because Sam knew that if Dean thought he had some satellite version that Sam could operate clear across town he might never leave the apartment again. He found just the right setting, low enough to keep Cas on edge, keep his breathing ragged and his skin flushed, but high enough that he never got used to it. Sam turned it on before he even got in the door at night, and while he never told Cas he couldn’t come, he did tell him he wasn’t allowed to touch himself.

  
The bedroom door stayed open. Dean went gradually insane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, I know. I KNOW guys, I'm sorry! Next chapter I promise you porn and resolution and ice-cream with rainbow jimmies.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for being so patient guys! The monster flu teamed up with injury the kid and set fire to my village. It’s been a long couple of weeks.

His shoulders and lower back ache from the strain of his position. He hadn’t been here more than five, ten minutes tops but the blindfold was already sealed to his face by the thin sheen of sweat now coating his whole body. Castiel shifts on his knees and arches to find a bit of comfort.

It was clear Sam was up to something the moment he got home because Castiel could hear the bite in Dean’s voice before they even made it into the apartment.

“Sam! Answer me!”

And Castiel hurried to his knees in front of the doorway as he’d done every day since Sam had decided to pull the reigns as a Dom. The brothers enter downstairs with heavy clomping feet. Dean’s still baiting his brother to talk to him but Sam refuses to engage, striding up the stairs to the loft with Dean at his heels.

“What are you doing?” Dean demanded, but Sam just went to a drawer and pulled out the padded cuffs, tossing a pillow on the floor at the foot of his bed, snapping his fingers and pointing to the cushion which Castiel crawls to immediately. Sam turns him so he’s facing the open door, cinches the cuffs then has him stretch his arms up high as they will go till he’s perched up on his knees, the links of the cuffs fed through the wood filigree of the bed’s ornate poster and clipped together.

The blindfold came next, his ears sparking to life once darkness dropped over his sight. Dean paces, restless, barking his brother’s name once, twice. Sam shifts next to him for a few seconds before the telltale click reaches Castiel’s ears and the plug comes alive inside him with a soft, insistent buzz. His moan is just as soft, back undulating at the gentle pleasure. After a beat of heavy silence where Castiel can practically hear the weighted looks the brothers are giving one another, Dean twists on his feet and moves away, cursing them.

“Fuck this.”

Sam sighs beside him, but it’s hard to tell if the exhale is one of relief or frustration. The sound of a chair lifted and moved, placed beside him. The sound of Sam changing his clothes, shish and creak of a pair of his leathers fitting over muscled thighs.

“You trust me?” Sam is right in front of him, Castiel can feel the heat of his body, Sam’s voice high above his head.

He tilts his face up, blind, serene. “Yes, Sir.”

“Then I’m gonna need you to relax for me.”

Castiel takes a deep breath in and releases all the tension in his body, a fraction of peace before Sam’s wide hand cracks solidly against his flank where the curve of his right buttock joins the line of his hip. He yells is surprise, gets one round pull of air before the Dom’s other hand lands equally hard on his left side. Castiel can’t help it, he screams again.

“I’m coming right back.”

And that’s where he finds himself now, stretched up on trembling knees, hips burning, the plug buzzing woefully soft against his prostate, straining to hear anything once Sam descended the stairs but there’s nothing for minutes and minutes and minutes…..

“No!”

Castiel jolts at the sound of Dean’s voice below.

“Not your call,” Footsteps as Sam moves across the loft.

“That’s not in his contract!”

The voices move together, getting closer.

“His contract is with you. Right now we’re working on more of a verbal arrangement.” They take the stairs, stop. A measured scuffle as they shift around. “Take your hand off me.”

Castiel’s heartbeat floods him with hot tension. The silence twangs like over-tuned catgut until Sam’s heavy step starts up again, alone.

The breeze of Sam moving past him paints a cool path on Castiel’s skin for a brief second before he hears the man arrange himself carefully in the chair at his side.

“Some people like pain,” It’s close and it’s soft but neatly clipped, so Castiel can tell that he’s the one being addressed, not his former Dom watching just outside the door. “Faulty wiring, or the rush that comes with it, they just straight like it and if they have enough of a taste, they’ll seek it out. Sometimes one of these people finds me, looking for a heavy handed Dom to make them hurt. Do you know why I turn them down?”

Castiel doesn’t know if this speech is for him or for Dean or if this is something Sam’s said to every sub he’s ever had, but he knows a prompt when he hears one.

“No, Sir.”

“Because simply causing people pain is not what I enjoy.”

Something cool and soft touches the skin of his chest and Castiel gasps at the unexpected sensation. It roams down the line of his abs then back up to tease delicately at his neck. He smells the tannic richness of leather and puts the pieces together. This must be one of Sam’s floggers, a short, multi-tailed one of velvety soft suede if he’s not mistaken.

“We’re taught to avoid pain, to fear it,” The fingers of suede trail the undersides of his arms, over his palms and back down. “But in the right context, it’s just a sensation, like pleasure. And sometimes when things get intense, those lines can blur.”

The flogger leaves his skin for a brief second before deftly flicking against his nipple, barely any force behind it, leaving a sweet little sting that’s gone as fast as it came.

“ _Oh_ ,” Castiel’s surprise comes in a short puff.

“What I like, what gives _me_ pleasure, is taking that fear, that discomfort, and molding it in my hands. Changing a sub one little stroke at a time until that pain _is_ pleasure, until they feel the stripes on their skin the same way they feel this.” He takes Castiel’s erection in hand, pulling long and slow as the sub moans and chases it with his hips. “Knowing that both sensations lead down the same path. And that I did that to them.”

With his left hand still working him over, Sam flicks the tails over Castiel’s other nipple, just as exquisitely skillful, the barest kiss of bright contact that lingers more in his mind than his skin as the flogger resumes it’s wandering caress.

“Are you afraid?” A plain, curious tone to Sam’s voice, expecting the truth.

“Yes, Sir.” He hears a snort of breath from outside the room and the creak of a floorboard.

“This isn’t a punishment.” Sam declares. “Repeat that to me.”

“It’s not a punishment, Sir.” Wriggling a bit on his knees because the plug is still filling him with a soft buzz. Sam’s hand is soft, the flogger soft against his heated flesh but the possibility is there. The possibility for all these things  to come at him harder, sharper. But it’s not. It’s not anything but maddeningly gentle, his imagination oversaturated with actions that never come.

“I’m going to begin striking you with this a little harder, but not enough to leave lasting marks. Color?”

Castiel’s heartbeat rabbits in his chest. Dean is watching.

“Green.”

The first hit lands flat across his stomach, and the anticipation of it flares higher for a terrifying second before fading enough for Castiel to realize he’s not hurt. The full splay of the tails had slapped across his middle instead of just the tips, but the force hadn’t actually increased. Sam removes his hand and the flogger, allowing Castiel to take stock of the sensation. When his shoulders release some of their tension, Sam returns his hand to the sub’s softening cock and methodically strokes it back to hardness. The next hit connects and inch lower than before, the next to his hip, followed by a series up and down the fronts of both thighs. Any increase in force is so gradual, Castiel would be hard pressed to measure it, but it never hurts him and after the nerves soothe out, he finds the sensation rather pleasant, like the sweep of a soft bristle brush, the eager sound of it more than a little reminiscent of skin meeting skin. Sam keeps up the steady hand pumping along Castiel’s shaft in time with his swings, and when he pauses the flogger, so too does his hand stop. Even though Castiel’s picked up on what Sam’s doing, the man states it clearly enough right now.

“I like to condition new subs slowly, draw it out as long as I can because what I’ve found is that smaller increments of pain over a greater period of time makes for a lasting shift in mindset. It doesn’t seem possible right now, but I can change you so that eventually you’ll beg me to hit you. You won’t know how to come anymore without the pain of my marks carved across your body.”

“ _Sam_.” Dean’s voice comes through the darkness shredded, pleading.

“Turn around.” He ignores his brother in favor of helping Cas switch position, the cuff links coiling tight and drawing Castiel’s cheek and chest against the bedpost, ass canted out on display. The warm press of Sam’s body is next to him now, kneeling at his side while he tilts Castiel’s head so that he can taste the salt of his neck with the flat of his tongue and growl in his ear.

“I’m going to start working you harder now, just along your ass and thighs. I want you to come, you hear me? Chase it, it’s yours.”

He’s gone from Castiel’s side, and it’s disorienting for a moment before the first splash of sueded thongs connects with his cheeks at the exact same time the plug comes powerfully to life, swallowing the tame sting of the lash with the brilliant, knotted onslaught to his prostate. Castiel wails but not from Sam’s hits, which come one after another and cause the plug to jostle in him mercilessly. Sam lays into him firmer than before but it still doesn’t hurt. There’s a sting that alights but it’s not any harder than some spankings he’s had. Castiel cries out with every strike, jolted closer and closer and fuck it feels _good_. He’s almost there...just a little more….

“ _Please-_ “ he chokes, and if Sam is testing him out or simply knows, it doesn’t matter. He brings the flogger down a scant fraction harder twice more and Castiel is spilling all over himself, head thrown back on a wail.

“There you go,” Sam curls back down at Castiel’s side, stroking his hair. “You see how responsive you are?” He makes no move to undo the cuffs, lightly pets at the newly warm skin of Castiel’s ass. “You’re going to take a little more like that every day. In exactly one week I’ll give you your first hard stripe with the crop, and that’s when I’ll fuck you.”

| | |

It’s not far after midnight. Only the furthest corners of the loft enjoy the darkness, the dirty seep of city lights finding the reflective surfaces and sketching out impressions: copper pots in the kitchen, polished table top, the rim of a tumbler as it tilts side and back….side and back.

The hard glitter points of Dean’s eyes in the dark.

It’s midnight because Sam is working. Because this is his hour for training and straps and pain. Because Sam has never been ashamed of what a theatrical, power Top leather Dom stereotype he is when he gets down to the red meat of what drives him, what he wants. Dean’s scoffed at it so many times in the past, given Sam endless shit about the fact that he was still that kid watching a bootlegged VHS of _Happiness in Slavery_ and not seeing an allegory but an actual world he could explore.

But he’s not playing anymore, he’s training Cas, and that man operates differently from the one Cas has encountered so far. Dean drains the rest of his glass, the ice cracking in half when he puts it down hard on the table. Another loud slap sounds like a shot in the dark and Dean flinches. Goddamnit, he flinches every time.

Red, double-sided leather paddle. He didn’t need to see it to know which tool Sam was using right now. It sounds louder than the force of the hit and that’s the point. Trick the mind, sub hears the paddle meet their skin like a lightning crack, but feels the contact as something they can handle. Maybe they’re not as soft as they imagined, maybe they could take more.

Dean knows damn well all the moves in Sam’s playbook, he’s watched dozens of terror giddy subs hand themselves over to his brother to be made into something new. It’s not the same as someone already into heavy impact, already steady under any hand that holds them, radiant with a cold, silent pride. Sam fucking loves the green ones, loves to warm them slowly, draw his approval and kindness back inch by inch and watch them chase it, unaware of just how far they begin to go to reclaim it until they emerge with a new set of tastes and Sam’s thumbprint all over them.

And he’s up there right now doing that to Cas. Third night in a row.

Another crack, followed up short by a cry. Why is Cas doing this? To prove that he can? To piss Dean off for demanding that he leave? Dean flinches at the next crack, the next. He pours another drink and grits his teeth, growling, throat too tight to swallow the liquor in his hand. Cas isn’t this kind of sub, he shouldn’t be, Dean knows this like he knows how to find the sun in the sky.

There’s silence.

The strain of waiting for the next strike builds until Dean realizes it’s not coming. Five interminable minutes while the whiskey melts in his hand and his teeth threaten to crack with how hard he’s trying to listen. It’s so dark downstairs his brother doesn’t notice him right away as he makes his way down the stairs and across the floor.

“He wear you out already?”

“Jeez-” Sam jumps and presses a hand to his stuttering heart.

“Thought you had better stamina than that.”

“What the hell are you doing Dean, you scared the shit outta me!”

“I’m not doin’ anything. Not a damn thing.” He props his feet up on the coffee table and takes a casual sip off his whiskey.

“And how’s that working out for you? Good? Good.” He stalks across the floor towards the playroom. Dean shakes off his feigned indifference instantly, jumps to his feet.

“Where the hell’r you going?”

Sam halts, turns trimly on his heel and takes three steps closer to Dean. “Castiel asked for the crop. Tonight. He doesn’t want to wait anymore to see what it feels like.”

The blood drains too fast and Dean sways on his feet, dizzy and nauseous and cold.

“Don’t.”

It’s worse than the thought of Sam fucking him. He’ll scream, Dean knows he will, and the flesh will go white, then red, then purple in a swollen branch across his beautiful round ass. Nothing will cool it, nothing will fade it but time and Cas will carry that pain, unable to sit, unable to walk without the reminder that he’s been marked by Sam. He thought he had more time, that Cas would suffer a few more days of this before backing out once things got too heavy. He couldn’t really want this, could he? Somewhere along the way this had turned into one fucked up game of chicken and so far Cas was winning.

Sam knew it, too.

“It might take me a while to find the right one.” He said evenly. “He’s got to hold position until I return, but I might just let him sweat it out for a bit.” There wasn’t a hint of winking amusement in Sam’s tone. He wasn’t willing to wait all night for Dean to get his head on straight. He had every intention of returning to Cas and giving him what he asked for, unless Dean found it in him to man up and do something about it.

| | |

It’s so pervasively warm in here, his face and belly warm from the focused heat of the candles, his backside pleasantly flushed from the paddle, any previous sting dulled to a comfortable ache. His palms slip against the painted wood when they start to sweat, so Castiel adjusts his grip. Sam had made him brace against the fireplace mantle, or rather the facade of one built into the far left wall. It’s got baroquely scrolled filigree of black on black, a wide mantle ledge filled with melting ivory candles dripping wax onto the eight squares of inlaid stone upon the floor. Another tiered heap of candles fill the shallow inset where a fire might go if this feature were real, and the flickering heat from both sources pulse against Castiel constantly. The minutes find him through each runnel of that heat and make him shiver.

When he hears the footsteps, Castiel straightens, flexes his back and shores up his frayed nerves. It’s not that he thinks Sam will waltz right in and tee up on him without warning, but the anticipation is driving him mad.

But it’s not Sam.

What does it say that he knows the _feel_ of Dean’s weight through space? That he can tell, as clearly as if he had turned around to look, who it is standing in the doorframe behind him by the way his skin erupts in goosebumps.

“Why are you doing this?”

Castiel doesn’t move, but _god_ , the soft agony in Dean’s voice knifes directly through his chest. He fits the jagged edges of his emotions back into place before responding.

“Why does it matter? It’s my choice, this is what I want.”

“Cas, look at me. Damnit turn around!”

Sighing, Castiel squeezes the wooden ledge in his hands one last time before pushing off and turning slowly to face Dean.

“What’s the plan here?” Dean spits, realizing too late the sound of his own brother’s words from a conversation past. “What are you trying to prove? That you’re a good sub? That you can take what Sammy dishes out? You don’t need this kind of training to be good, you’re _already_ good Cas. And I know first hand what subs are like when Sam’s finished with them and that’s not who you are!”

“You don’t _know_ who I am Dean!” Castiel lets his anger spill out messy and slick, same as if he’d been gutted. Exactly the same. “After all of this, after I opened myself up to you, gave you my trust and put everything in my life aside just for the chance to be with you, how can you act like I’m the kind of man who would gladly walk out that door the minute things got difficult? Did you think it would be easy forever? _I didn’t_ . I _like_ when you care for me Dean, submitting to you is.....nothing in my life has ever made sense the way this does, but if you’re not willing to treat me with respect--”

“I respect you!” He snaps, voice tight.

“Bullshit! Shutting me out is the opposite of respect. It tells me that no matter what I do, no matter how hard I work at this, you’ll never look at me as someone worth the effort to let in.”

“That’s not- it’s not like that at all!” Dean aches at the naked hurt on Castiel’s face, grips the frame of the door so as not to run to him. He can’t, he can’t…. “Please, just- “

He doesn’t know how to continue.

“Did I do something wrong?” Castiel has never sounded so unsure of himself before, hands pressed to his naked thighs to hide the shaking. They both know he’s talking about that day.

“No! No baby, you didn’t-- I’m a fuckup, ok? I left things open ended when I should have just done my job and set a date for us to finish it. It wasn’t fair to either of us and I’m sorry.”

Something heavy passes over Castiel’s face, unreadable in the flickering candlelight, but then his expression closes off, hardens in a way Dean’s never seen from him before. It’s worse than the soft hurt that he put there only moments before, worse because he has the distinct feeling that his opportunity to reach Cas is gone for good.

“What’s there to apologize for? I could have said something just as easily as you, but I didn’t because I thought-- I wanted to be a partner, and I’d just assumed you wanted that, too. It was naive of me. You create the rules and we follow them until the transaction is over. I got it, thank you for the lesson.”

“You know that’s not what we were! Just come out of there, take that collar off and we’ll talk.” He knows he sounds desperate, the tenor of his panic rising in time with how quickly Castiel is cooling like stone before him.

“I don’t think so, Dean. You’ve made it clear you want this to be over, so I don’t really have anything more to say. Besides, it would be rude to my next _transaction_.” He turns, makes steady steps with his head held high back toward the fireplace.

This is it then.

If he says nothing, if he does what the actions of his past dictate, he’ll turn on his heel and it will be over. Just like he wanted, like he told himself he wanted, because that was how he could protect Cas from any more fuck ups. That way the man could go and….and...

Selfish. He’s been so selfish. As Cas walks away, the contours finally come into focus. All this time he’s never fully let himself think of Castiel with anyone else. Somewhere, unconsciously, spinning the idea of Cas heading home and resuming his old life, leaving this world behind at Dean’s feet, folded and stowed like his gear. His rope, his gag, his Cas. But that’s not fair. Castiel sought this life out before he met Dean, and if Dean pushed him away, he would seek it again. Maybe this is what he’s been trying to say with Sam.

Rage, self-pity, self-loathing, a vein of terror. Dean lists sideways as they swell, expand, fissure the barricade he’s been holding in place for too long.

He charges across the threshold, sweeps Cas up as he goes and spins him, their feet tangling as he drives him into the wall with both hands gripping his shoulders.

“ _I want to keep you, okay?!_ ” He roars right in Castiel’s face, blue shock of widening eyes so much better than flat resignation.

“You-- “

“No,” Dean stops Cas before he can begin. “Cas, I want to keep you here in _chains_ . I don’t want to stop this, ever. 24/7, do you know what that means?” Castiel nods silently and Dean only shakes his head. “I don’t think you do. I want _everything_ from you, Cas. I want to take what you used to be and grind it to dust. I want to hold you down and blot out the whole goddamned world until it’s just _me_ and that fucking terrifies me Cas because with you, I- I can’t see the bottom! There’s no end to it!” He pushes away, his faithless hands impatient with settling for Castiel’s shoulders when there was so much more touch and it had been so long. Dean began to pace in the tight coil of orbit he allowed himself, only just far enough so Castiel wouldn’t move.

“If you stayed, I would push you deeper and deeper, and I think you’d let me. You never stop me Cas and you never hesitate and I can’t tell anymore if it’s because it’s what you want or if you don’t know any better. Most people- most people don’t get this heavy on their first go, it takes time! I’ve been doing this my whole life it feels like, and I’ve still never…..I’ve never _kept_ anyone before you, Cas…..”

It’s a long silence. Or it feels long because Castiel’s mind is too entangled to advise him to breathe. The candles spit and judder their flames to make up for the dense stillness between them, the shadows lively and sharp.

“But….relationships?”

Dean shakes his head, “None. I train them, I play, sometimes it gets a little regular, but it never lasts long. I’ve never had a real sub of my own because there’s never been anyone I…..I’ve never even let another sub into my home before you.”

“You didn’t say anything.” A prompt, not an accusation.

“Because people change their mind. They take a quick dip and the taste for it fades, or it was different than what they imagined, or hell, I’ve had plenty that decided they’d rather be the one holding the leash. I didn’t want to scare you, or put some kind of heavy expectation over your head. You’re so new and you have this whole other life that………...you were always going to leave at some point but it just kept getting more intense-- at least, for me --and that day it was tearing me up inside. I wanted to keep you in my bed so bad I couldn’t think of anything else and I- I fucking-”

Dean heaves, shoving back on a reflex that might have been a sob if given the chance, the heel of his hand pressing against plate bone. He misses the look Castiel gives him, he takes the silence for agreement. Dean wanted too much and in the end it had hurt Castiel in more ways than one.

He should go. Cas had his answers and maybe--

“I quit my job,” Dean’s eyes snap to meet his, the question clear even though he doesn’t dare speak in case he misheard. Slowly, with an underwater grace, Castiel leans against the wall and sinks down….sinks.....melts to his knees, doesn’t look away from Dean. “Before I came here. I wasn’t trying to be presumptuous, but I couldn’t have any distractions.”

He tips forward, fingers seeking the floor, flexes his spine and crawls, calculating, wary of spooking Dean but knowing all the same how to enthrall him.

“You said I could stay,” He rocks back on his heels when he reaches Dean’s feet, hands behind his back, fingers over wrists. “You know, for years there’ve been things I’ve wanted that I could never put into words. A persistent dissatisfaction that hovered at the fringes. I thought the island would give me what I needed, but it didn’t. It’s not the sex or the submission, it’s you. I want to serve _you_.”

Dean’s breath hitches, he bites his lips, shakes his head, listens to the dying squalls of resistance in his mind.

“There’s nothing back there for me, I can give it all up right now and it would cost me nothing.”

“ _Cas_ ,” he pleads.

“Keep me here, lock me up, make me ignorant of everything but how to please you. I want that more than I’ve ever wanted anything. It’s why I couldn’t leave you.” Dean whines, high and thin, starving but still holding back. “But the price is that you can’t shut me out when things get hard, and you can’t decide for me how this should end. If it comes to that, we decide together.”

“I don’t- “ Dean rasps in a hopeful whisper, swallows around his too dry throat. “I don’t want it to end.”

“Neither do I….Sir.”

“Are you sure about this? You’ve gotta be _absolutely sure_.” The last few words strangled by his excruciating control. After all, this wasn’t a scene where he was free to take as his hunger deemed fit. Castiel wasn’t consenting to part of it, he was consenting to all of it.

Castiel nods.

“ _Say it_ ,” Dean hisses. Between the two of them, it’s Dean who trembles, shivers like a first time Dom strung out on the power and the glut of possibilities. Castiel is completely calm, eyes shining up at him with resolute devotion and it’s that look that slots it all into place for Dean. He can _have_ this.

He can have Cas.

“I’m sure.”

At the word, he crashes to his knees and collides into Cas. Hands in his hair, down his back, looped around his slim waist so Dean can dive into that plush, wet mouth and feel Cas push back against him. Snaking against one another, they suck and grind tongue against tongue, pant, twist, devour as if they could climb inside one another, will themselves into a new beast. Damp skin and four greedy arms, one eye green and one blue.

“Don’t move.” Pushing to his feet, Dean’s found his true voice, the commanding one that makes Castiel’s eyelids drop into voluptuous jeweled slits. He doesn’t need to think too hard on what he’s about to do, he knows exactly what needs to happen right now.

Sam doesn’t have the same sorts of gear he does, but he always stocks the basics. There’s exactly one coil of tan hemp rope in the toy chest, which is all Dean requires. He tosses this and a bottle of lube on the floor beside Cas, drags a silky black sheepskin rug over and pulls Castiel onto it by the collar before unbuckling the wretched thing and tossing it across the room. He picks up the skein of rope, weighing it in his hands, towering over Cas and letting him take in the posture of dominance.

“Undress me.” he growls, Castiel’s eyes lighting up. He sits up higher on his knees to reach the buttons of Dean’s flannel, getting the first two neatly undone before Dean begins to unwind the rope and measure it along his forearm. The action is so unconsciously expert, Castiel loses his place watching it, spellbound. But instead of reprimanding Cas, Dean exhales a sinful little grunt.

“Has Sam used this on you?” Though he can already guess the answer from the starved way Castiel is having difficulty tearing his eyes from the rope.

“No, Sir. Only cuffs.” He shakes himself and returns to the shirt, helping him slip each arm out and holding the shed garment up in both hands, only to have Dean pluck it up and sling it to the floor.

“And did he fuck you?” He growls, unrepentant for the stab of clear possessiveness lacing his words.

“No,” Castiel husks, fingers tightening on the waistband of his Dom’s jeans, eyes tipped up and huge. That bottomless blue innocence that somehow never burns away, no matter what depraved fantasy Dean enmeshes him in. It makes him want to _bite_.

An impatient yank and Dean has the button of his fly open. Castiel scrambles to peel the jeans and briefs down his hips and slide them off each leg. He sits up, confronted with the glorious spectacle of Dean, bare and glowing in the candlelight. Wide stance drawing the eye up well muscled thighs to the juncture between his hips, root of dark curls and the imposing swing of his hefty cock, too large to resist the tug of gravity. It’s going to split him in two. Castiel groans and tilts like a ship’s mast, this man’s cock can unmake him and he wants so badly to be dismantled.

Tight, flexing abs, the widening vee of ribs, pecs, shoulders, muscle stacked on muscle and spilling down his arms. Dean is a god, or a demon, beautiful either way and either way capable of making Castiel want to lay himself out at his feet and turn any inky desire into his life’s purpose to fulfill. It’s that dark thing stalking the border of his awareness, unfocused and terrifyingly limitless.

He could do anything under Dean’s hand.

“Up straight, hands behind your back. I’m gonna tie you up pretty and fuck you slow until you cry.”

Dean circles Cas as he weaves his upper body harness, artful clusters of knots dotting his chest, a simple Y of rope converging from his shoulders down the measure of his spine to where his wrists are firmly, but carefully secured. Dean takes forever, endlessly mindful of making it too tight or too restrictive and Castiel patiently lets him. Even if he wouldn’t mind something a bit harsher, these actions are for Dean’s peace of mind and he couldn’t deny Dean a thing if he wanted to.

“Open.”

Two lines of rope notch between his teeth, branching over his cheeks and securing at the back of his neck before meeting the rest of the hemp attached to his wrists. This is new.

“Snap your fingers if you need me to stop. Do you understand?” Castiel nods. “Let me hear it.”

_Snap snap._ Clear and clean. Anyone other than Castiel, and possibly Sam, would have likely missed the slight softening around Dean’s lips, the expansion of his chest as a pressure eases. Minute but not insignificant.

“You don’t get to come tonight,” Castiel whines in equal parts dejection and arousal. “I plan on keeping you desperate for days, angel. Hard and frantic for it until it makes you insane.” He moves behind Cas so he can brush wet kisses up and down his neck between words. “I’ll fuck you over and over, bury my cock in your mouth and tease your poor, aching dick just to watch you cry.”

Castiel bears down on the fibers between his teeth, wet with his saliva, and hears the creak in his head. He twists his wrists, already going hazy at the edges now that he’s well secured. Without realizing it, he sinks deeper into the soft pile of the rug, head dropping back some and eyes heavy.

Half-drugged with contentment.

Dropping to his knees before Cas, Dean pulls a loud breath through his nose then cups his sub’s face in both hands with absolute care. His sub. _His_.

It was the kind of gift he never had the guts to dare dream of. “I’m gonna take such good care of you, sweetheart.” He vows, rubbing his thumbs against Castiel’s temples as they lock eyes. “From now on, the only thing I want to live for is making you happy.”

Whining softly, Castiel wishes he didn’t have the gag. He wishes he could answer back in a surge of agreement that he felt the same. That all he’s ever wanted from the first moment he laid eyes on Dean was to give himself over body and soul.

Tracing the pattern of knots as his hands sweep down, Dean takes a moment to reacquaint himself with the contours of Castiel’s body. Finds every neat cut of trim muscle, fits his fingers into the grooves of Castiel’s ribs down the back and around again. He spreads Cas’ knees a bit wider, wider. Pulls him upright by the rope around his chest and lubes up the two fingers of his right hand.

“You only get these two fingers, because tonight I want to watch your face while you get stretched out on this.”  He pulls his cock forward and lets it slap heavily back on his belly. It’s been long time- it feels like a long time- since Cas has had anything even a fraction that big inside him. He eyes the veiny girth that juts up obscenely, dripping a thin line of fluid. There was no getting around how massive Dean’s dick got when it was this screaming hard. Dean was going to push that thing deep into Castiel’s body and it wasn’t going to be easy. Castiel shivers and groans, already completely fucking desperate for it. “I’ll go slow, but you need to feel every inch I take back, so it’s going to burn. Then tomorrow I’ll do it again and again until your sweet little ass remembers what it was made for.”

Getting a good solid grip on the harness, Dean tugs Castiel up a little higher on his knees and scoots forward so that he can easily reach between the man’s legs, prodding at his whole, smearing it with lube. Cas has been wearing a plug on and off at Sam’s discretion, so the immediate intrusion of two fingers isn’t hard manage. He grunts anyway. It’s always so different to have a person working their way inside his body as opposed to the silicon and plastic.

Dean doesn’t spread his fingers or seek to tease Castiel’s long neglected prostate, the only thing he’s interested in at the moment is systematically coating Cas’ walls with lube as thoroughly as he can.

When he’s satisfied, Dean insinuates himself between Castiel’s legs and positions him leaning back, the flat of his shoulders propped against the side of the bed. More and more lube gets poured over the thick column of Dean’s erection, which jerks at the coolness, straining forward as if it might fuck up into Castiel’s heat all on it’s own should Dean let go.

“You ready, baby?” Dean sounds as if he’s the one that’s been gagged, reedy and parched. Castiel nods and nods, not stopping until the oil-slick knob of Dean’s cock lines right up to his hole and, with a deft roll of his Dom’s hips, screws it’s way inside.

Castiel grunts in shock at the sensation, head collapsing back onto the mattress, eyes squeezed tight.

“Stay just like this,” Dean hisses. He takes Castiel’s ass in both hands and carefully spreads him open. With a few gentle surges, he gets another inch or so deeper. “That’s it, darlin’. You’re not gonna come, are you?”

“Mmhh mmhh,” he lifts up to shake his head and the movement impales him another two inches. The bright spot of pain makes him sob but it melts to that warm honey ache he loves so well. They stay like that, Dean letting Cas relax into the stretch while he fingers the fever hot skin of his rim where it’s pulled tight around Dean’s cock, drizzling more lube and smearing it down the remainder of his shaft.

“I’m about to push up hard into you boy, and you’re gonna hold still for me and take it, aren’t you?” Castiel makes a noise of agreement, his breathing quickens. “That’s right. You’re my beautiful, submissive angel,” he tongues around the ropes on Castiel’s chest, sucking lushly at his dusky pink nipples. “And you need me to tie you down and fuck you open just like this.” He shoves his hips up, at the same time yanking Castiel down the last few inches flush with his lap.

Castiel chokes around the gag.

“ _Godfuckingdamnit_ that’s good,” Dean snarls, twining both muscled arms around Cas and burying his face in curve of his sub’s neck. Without pulling out, Dean grinds his hips in a measured circle, fitting Cas tight against him and reveling in how deeply he’s embedded inside. “ _Ungh Cas_ \- squeeze around me, milk my cock sweetheart. Oh fuck! Like that, yeah….” Dean keeps up the steady grind of his hips while Castiel does his best to work his overstretched hole; it feels amazing and Castiel whines, keens as best he can around the rope in his teeth, careful not to focus too hard on the building pressure in his belly or the way his own dick rubs sensuously against the terrain of Dean’s abs.

“Never wanted to let you go, baby. Just wanted you to be safe.” He holds on tighter, licking his way up and down Castiel’s throat. “Look at me.”

The moment Castiel tips his head up to meet Dean’s eyes, the Dom pulls back and slams into him once, twice.

Castiel’s muffled wail brings a dark glitter to Dean’s expression. There’s the Dom he’s been missing, the confident one with a trunk full of excellent ideas.

He pulls out and thrusts hard into him again…..waits…….then again……

“It’s too late now for you, angel. You know why?” Dean looks at him with all deadly seriousness. “Because I love you.” Punctuates his words by plunging in again. “I fucking _love you_ , Cas. And I’m never letting you go. Not _ever-- uh!_ ”

Castiel’s chest feels like it might collapse under the weight of things. _Dean loves him_ . The bastard just confessed his love while Castiel was bound and gagged and split open on the world’s most perfect cock. _Bastard….._

“You’ll never be free again, is that what you want?”

His sobbing now is from frustration. Castiel nods his head then shuts his eyes as the tears spill down the sides of his face.

Dean lays in harder, but refuses to go any faster, careful with every thrust not to touch Castiel’s prostate, or the pleading purple line of his untouched cock. He grunts like a feral animal, the sweat shined muscles of his body bunching and curling with his urgency. He wants to tattoo his mastery over Castiel’s body in every way he knows how. Chains and locks and yards and yards of rope. Orders and rules and sweet smiles and laughter under the sheets while it rains outside. A goddamned house in the country if that’s what Cas wants.

His bloodstained heart on a platter.

“ _Yes_ -” Dean loses himself in the exquisite feeling of Castiel’s body, bounces him violently down on his lap, the exertion burning through him, sweat stinging his eyes. “Oh fuck yes! Love you Cas- _love_ you- _love_ you-”

He chants it over and over, as if he could drill the very concept deep into Castiel’s core with the end of his cock. And Castiel can do nothing but struggle for air and struggle for control because _shit he’s going to come_ and he wants to scream.

But Dean does it for him. Drops his head onto Castiel’s shoulder and howls right against his skin as he comes.

Moaning, twisting against the restraints with the feeling of Dean’s release surging inside him-- God it was everything he wanted in life. The fog of his orgasm blankets every last nerve in Cas’ body, but never peaks. Dean’s strong hands holds him tight while Castiel’s mind drifts in a euphoric haze. Laid out gently on the thick sheepskin rug, Dean carefully undoes the ropes and kneads Castiel’s muscles, rubbing his thumbs into the red marks at the corners of his mouth before kissing him delicately.

“Dean…” he croaks, but is shushed as Dean helps him to his feet and tucks him into the bed. He permits Dean to fuss over him: cleaning him up with warm washcloths and dry towels, bringing him water and making him drink it, breaking off a few bites of some kind of energy bar Sam had stashed in a drawer. It tastes like coconut oil and wood shavings and Cas makes a face and refuses to eat more. Dean tries it himself and promptly spits it back out into the wrapper and promises to make french toast and bacon in the morning.

Just before they fall asleep, when Dean’s finally fit them together the way he wants and settles  down with one of Castiel’s hands held against his chest, Castiel catches his gaze and smiles.

“I love you, too.”

| | |

There are no windows in Sam’s room, so when Castiel wakes, it’s to what little light makes it through the half closed door from the skylight in the other room. It still smells of snuffed out candles and sex and they’d never bothered to realign the mattress on the frame from when it had gotten knocked askew. His body aches and it appears his poor, unheeded erection never fully slackened while he slept, but Dean is grinning at him with unfiltered joy and Castiel knows the feeling.

They walk downstairs holding hands, Castiel naked and still mildly aroused, Dean in low slung jeans and nothing else. He stops short mid-way down, pointing across the room and biting on his smile.

Sam. Sprawled across the entire couch, his giant feet dangling off one end. He’s still wearing leather pants, which can’t be comfortable and will probably be impossible to get out of when he wakes up. But the best part is the long, sturdy looking crop with its heavy wrapped handle and wide-folded tip clutched in Sam’s hands and pressed to his face like a beloved stuffed bear.

“Just look at the little guy,” Dean whispered. “All tuckered out.”

The two of them snicker and shush one another, failing miserably at keeping quiet. Stirring with a groan, Sam shifts in his sleep, swinging the crop and bringing it down on his own thigh with a crack. He yelps in pain and thrashes about as Dean and Cas erupt in long peals of red-faced laughter.

“Come on, angel.” Dean wipes at the dampness in his eyes. “Go get washed up and I’ll get started on that breakfast I promised you.” He kisses him on the cheek.

Cas can hear the brothers arguing over the noise of the shower, the only intelligible words coming Sam screaming _‘fucking finally, dipshit’,_ and for some reason he’s overwhelmed with happiness, a hot well of tears startling a surprised laugh out of him at his own silliness.

The commotion never really stops, and when Cas emerges from the bedroom he can see why. The two of them are tangled up, Dean unable to break free of the headlock Sam’s got him in, but in a good enough position to punch his brother in the ribs over and over.

“Ow! Quit it!” Sam twists them around and flings Dean to the ground. If Castiel was concerned before he’s quickly relieved of the notion as it’s immediately clear this is a simple matter of two sibling working out their grievances the way they always had.

“You quit it!” Dean charges him. It’s a good thing they’ve got so much room and not a lot of furniture because the brothers keep right on wrestling across the floor, indifferent to Castiel, standing there watching them with perplexed amusement.

“You’re a bitch!”

“No, _you’re_ a bitch!”

“No bitch, _you_ are!”

“Is there coffee at least?” Castiel sighs. Dean is straddled atop Sam’s body, pinning him with some difficulty as the larger man tries to buck him off, but his whole face lights up when he looks up at Castiel.

“Yeah babe, it’s brewin’ now. Go pour us both one and wait beside the table. I got y-AAAHHHHH!!!” he screams as Sam gets his nipple in a healthy pinch and twists. Dean retaliates in kind until Sam screams back, and the both of them holler and tweak each other like children until they agree to count back from three and let go at the same time.

Groaning, each rubbing away the soreness in their chests, they help each other to their feet and amble over to the kitchen. Sam starts plating the food Dean made while his brother scoops up something from the counter and takes his seat, his face going soft and fond as he looks up at Castiel.

“C’mere darlin’,” he lifts his hand, the tan leather cuffs dangling from his fingers. Castiel’s face tints immediately pink, his breathing quickens and his dick goes hard. With his free hand, Dean takes Castiel’s wrist and turns it over, kissing at the soft skin there. “Do I have permission to put these on you?” The sly look he tosses Castiel from beneath his lashes does little to hide his nerves. As if Castiel would say no. As if that was ever a possibility.

“Yes,” Castiel husks out. The tenderness with which Dean slides each cuff on and fastens them into place tears straight through Cas. His throat tightens, his eyes burn but he hangs onto his composure. Everything is right there at the surface today, but it wouldn’t do to break down now, so instead he shudders, exhales when the final buckle is cinched closed. “ _Thank you, Sir._ ”

“Now tell me,” Dean pulls him in by the hips and kisses a straight dotted line across his belly. “Do I have permission to keep you? Do you consent to being locked up and tied down and worshiped and shown all the ways I adore you from now on?”

“Mm hmm,” Cas nods emphatically, momentarily speechless, overwhelmed by how much he loves this man, by the chance at happiness with him that only yesterday seemed to be slipping further from his grasp. “Yes- yes, Sir. Let me be yours, let me serve you. I’ll be so good for you, I’ll--”

With a hard tug he’s pulled into Dean’s lap and kissed.

Kissed and kissed until he remembers what to do, wraps his arms around his Dom’s neck and returns every ounce of passion being poured into him by this beautiful, infuriating, astonishing man.

“So here’s what we’re gonna do,” Kissing his way down Castiel’s neck, Dean nudges his sub’s thighs apart to fondle the tender swell of his balls. “After breakfast you’re gonna call your landlord and give him notice you’re moving out. Bobby’s got a trailer I can borrow, so next weekend we can drive down and pack up whatever you need--”

“Wait,” Castiel looks over at Sam uncertainly, trying for one second to ignore the deliberate tease of Dean’s hands. “Doesn’t- Is this ok with Sam?”

Sam laughs as he drops his plate on the table, “Um, Dean’s been a walking nightmare for the last few weeks when you just moved _upstairs_. I’m not dealing with him if you’re out of state. So yeah, you’re moving in.”

“See angel?” And he dug his hands into Castiel’s hair to dive back into his mouth as if that were all that needed to be said. It was a long, blissful stretch of minutes where they forgot about the food, or Sam rolling his eyes at them, and just reveled in each other. Castiel dug his fingers in hard wherever they touched flesh, protection against the sudden notion that this moment couldn’t be real.

“Uhh,” Sam shuffled to his feet, hovering beside the couple that had yet to come up for air. “We gotta be at work in, like, less than an hour…..”

“You should go get ready then,” Dean rasps, voice scraping gravel.

When his brother finally leaves them for his room, Dean pulls back, cupping Castiel’s cheek in his hand, his voice equally soft. “I’m sorry for being such a dick before, Cas. I didn’t get to tell you last night, but thank you….for not leaving me.”

“I can’t leave you,” Raising his hand and waving the cuff between them with a playful smirk. “I belong to you. I belonged to you the moment we met.”

Dean brushes their noses together, paints his words against Cas’ waiting mouth with his lips.

“God, I love you.”

“And I love you….Sir.”

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the kind words and kudos, they really mean a lot! I've got another scene that didn't really fit into this fic so I'll be spinning it off into another installment at some point. Hope to see you then!


End file.
